Regardless of your source of email make sure you have permission to send the recipient your emails. However, you will note that there are many people who would want to receive your email campaigns and offers and you happen to have their emails, now here is how to build your list from existing emails.

• Outlook Address Book. – While I started using outlook several years ago. I had a few emails or I was just lazy to add emails to my address book. I later learnt to use software from plaxo.com that adds every email address coming to my inbox and leaving outbox to the address book. It goes ahead and imports my contacts to an account with them, where I can download the emails to an excel sheet and export them to a newsletter or mailing list management software. Today I just checked and I’ve over 2,000 emails accumulated over years from outlook only. All I need to is import them to my mailing list and notify them I’ll be sending them a weekly or monthly newsletter in a, b, c, d… and give them the option to update their preferences or be removed from list. Also some emails may be invalid for reasons like someone left a company e.t.c. and will therefore clean my list by deleting bounces and be left with about 900 active email users. Not a bad number right? 30-40% validity would be a good success rate.

• Business Cards: – I almost forgot: I’ve a card holder, which is full of business cards, in my wallet there are more, some at home and others at my laptop bag. Copy or get someone to list the email contacts on an excel sheet or CSV file. Import the list to your mailing list and do a mail. Introduce yourself and ask them if they would want to remain in your list. Clean your list from the remove from list requests and bounces as well. (60-80)% validity would be okay. Remember these are not strangers; there are people you have met at some point.

• Network Meetings; Get business cards and insist on direct emails.

• Trade Shows: keep on collecting emails as you collect other information and demographics.

• Seminars and events. These are individuals that you share interests and will be therefore interested in what you have to offer.

• Web-sign ups. I consider this to be the most important of all. Turn strangers into friends and friends into paying customers. Most customers visit sites and may not do enquiries on that day. Two weeks later they sleep over it and are interested. They come looking for your site, they can remember the exact URL, they try the search engines but still can’t get your site, and unfortunately they land on to your competitor site. You then become discouraged and feel the website you invested heavily on is not paying up. From today let that feeling fade away and act fast to implement a newsletter management software.

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Supreme eMarketing

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