A couple of years back it was easy to build an email mailing list. People were willing to sign up for all most anything but today things are different. To get someone to opt in to your mailing list today you need to offer people something of exceptional value and even then a lot of people immediately opt out on receipt of their free product. Even if people stay subscribed to your mailing list only a small percentage will open your subsequent emails.
There are many reasons why email marketing today so a lot less lucrative than it was in the past. One reason is that people today receive oodles of emails and in most cases far more than are humanly possible to read each day. Another reason is that people are a lot more hesitant to disclose their personal information because they may have been spammed in the past. Identity thief is far more prevalent today and so people are reluctant to give their details to strangers.
It is therefore more important today than ever to build and maintain trust with your email subscribers if you are to have success with email marketing.
There are basically two ways that you can use to build an email list. One is single opt-in and the other is double opt-in. Either way people will at least look at your emails more favorably than spam emails but people may still find your emails a nuisance if you send too many of them or they are not unique to you. By unique to you I mean you should stay away from sending emails like those affiliate marketing emails that everyone else sends to their subscribers. If nothing else they are virtually useless as people will only read the first one they see with same headline and ignore the rest.
As an internet marketer you should only send out newsletters and emails that contain useful information and interesting offers. It is to your benefit if you only send them to people who are genuinely interested in your product and/or service.
With the single opt-in email subscription method people enter their name and email address and they are subscribed when they press the "Subscribe" button. A very simple and easy method for the subscriber. However this method has been abused in the past with other people and sometimes spammers opting in for others. Also because the email address is not verified your email mailing lists can have a certain percentage of errors due to typing or deliberate errors by your subscribers. Spammers have also been known to use programs to automatically add hundreds and sometimes thousands of fake emails addresses to single opt-in email lists.
A double opt-in email subscription method is a better solution but it is a bit more complicated for the subscriber to join your list. Because of spam issues this method is used by most internet marketers today. The basic different is that the subscriber is required to confirm his email address by clicking a link in an email automatically sent after they hit the "Subscribe" button. They are then only added to the mailing list after they click this confirmation link. This stops spammers and others opting in for other people. By virtue of the fact that they have to go to this extra trouble then it stands to reason that they must be interested in what you have to offer them.
Some email marketers today also use captcha tools as well as the double opt-in method but some of these captcha tools can be quite frustrating to use so if you decide to use them check them out yourself first. Captcha tools use odd looking numbers and letters that a person must type into a box correctly in order to subscribe. If they are difficult to use people will just give up and move on.
