There are several ways to collect email addresses for your marketing campaign: but it’s worth remembering that the only valid ones are those based on users’ permission. That is, based on the fact that their owners that have clearly allowed you to send bulk emails on a regular basis. (Also, you can use turboSMTP as a delivery system solely if you mail out newsletters to this kind of contacts).
This means that collecting email addresses by renting lists, buying lists or even harvesting contacts on the web (for instance using a spider or other email extractors), is not recognized as an email marketing best practice: apart from being illegal in most countries, it will harm your delivery rate and eventually make ISPs label you as a spammer.
No matter how big your list can be, if it’s not made of opt-in addresses it will just end up being a massive amount of dead wood: loads >of non-existent or unused contacts, and above all no interest at all from the users. Which is the most important thing in email marketing.
Now how to get legal and effective email addresses to build or enlarge your mailing list and expand your marketing reach?
1. The best way is still to put a subscription form on your website, possibly in a prominent place. If you promise to provide fresh and interesting content, your visitors will be happy to opt-in and become regular subscribers. So if you haven’t done it yet, hurry up. If you have a budget, you can also promote your pages containing this form using Google AdWords: instead of wasting money buying bad lists, invest it in a fine and recognized form of advertising.
2. Also, you can try sending a professional welcome email (one and only!) to your contacts, asking for permission to send them newsletters. If they’re interested and the answer is positive, well done; if they don’t answer or say no, absolutely don’t add them to your database. But at least it was worth a try. Here’s a sample.
3. Another useful tip is to always have a subscription form at hand when you take part to trade fairs or meetings: even better, you can directly ask for subscription on your website with a tablet.
4. And last but not least, a very effective way to collect other addresses is to use social media: both sharing your content (possibly associated with an on-page subscription form) and telling your friends that they can subscribe to your amazing newsletter.