According to statistics, email marketing generates $44 for every $1 spent. That’s an ROI of 4400%!

What’s more, shoppers are also found to spend 138% more when marketed to via email, and email is shown to be 40 times more effective for acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined.

From stats like these, it’s obvious that email marketing is highly lucrative and effective. However, before you can leverage the power of email marketing, you need to have a list of addresses to market to.

This is where list building comes in.

Although it might be tempting to do whatever you can to gain subscribers, this is a dangerous (and ineffective) tactic.

One of the most important things to focus on when starting with email list building is customer autonomy. To create an email list that truly fuels business growth, you should be using opt-in list building techniques.

If you don’t, this will compromise your email lead building efforts.

Ready to find out why we choose opt-in list building? Let’s jump into the details.

What Is Opt-in List Building?

Have you ever signed up for a service or online account and come across a small check box and the words “Tick to receive marketing materials and newsletters”?

If you have, this is an example of opt-in email list building. The company is asking for your consent before adding your email to their marketing lists.

Another example of opt-in list building is when you subscribe to someone’s newsletter on a site by filling in a form. The form acts gain your consent for receiving emails from the site or business.

To carry out opt-in list building, you need to ensure leads are given an opportunity to grant consent to receiving your marketing emails.

If you purchased a list of email addresses or are using addresses from business cards—and marketing to them without their active consent, this is non-opt-in list building. The same goes for using email addresses that your site has collected where the owners did not consent to receive marketing materials.

Let’s now examine why this is not a good idea and why we recommend opt-in email list building strategies instead.

It Is the Law

First and foremost, in many cases, it is illegal to send unsolicited marketing emails.

In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act does not require you to gain consent from email recipients. This means you can send marketing emails to American leads without breaking the law. However, this is not the case with European and Canadian leads.

According to the more stringent GDPR laws and Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation, you must gain clear and affirmative consent from recipients before sending them marketing materials.

What’s more, even though the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t ban unsolicited emails, it’s still advised to steer clear of this with American recipients to avoid complaints.

Repercussions for violating anti-spamming includes being blacklisted and fined, sometimes as much as $41,484 per non-compliant email.

For many online marketers, you will likely have residents from all over the world on your email list. To avoid violating anti-spamming laws, it’s essential that you use opt-in email list building practices.

It’s More Effective

Besides keeping you on the right side of the law, opt-in list building is more effective.

This is because everyone on your list has agreed to be there. They are a more targetted group of leads, and the likelihood of them engaging with your emails and marketing materials is therefore higher.

If you send emails to recipients who haven’t given their consent, they will most likely ignore these communications because they will look like (and be) spam.

It’s Cheaper

Let’s be honest. Email marketing does come with some costs. The larger your email list and the more emails you send out, the higher your costs will be.

For this reason alone, you don’t want to have a bloated email list filled with recipients who don’t want to receive emails from you. This will bring down your ROI and drive up costs unnecessarily.

Besides choosing opt-in list building and respecting permission levels, you should also do regular pruning of your list to ensure that all your recipients want to continue receiving your messages. All you have to do is send out a mail to the addresses with the lowest open rates, asking the recipient to take action if they don’t want you to remove them from your list.

If no action is taken, remove the address.

This is an essential component of email list management. The last thing you want is to give yourself more work by adding people to your list who never wanted to receive communications in the first place.

Opt-in List Building Is Better for Your Brand Image

Have you ever been spammed? If so, what did you think of the company doing it? You probably thought, “Bunch of money-hungry sharks, there’s no way I’m buying anything from you!”

If you start emailing people without their consent, this is spammy behavior. The recipients will likely think you’re just after sales, and you aren’t providing value. This is the opposite of how you want them to feel.

In today’s marketing world, the most effective techniques are ones where brands prove and provide value first and then directly market their offering. This is also the core of successful drip campaigns.

Sending out unsolicited emails without doing proper email lead building will work against all your engagement efforts because the receivers probably won’t trust your brand.

Streamline Your Email Marketing

Besides being the most compliant route, opt-in contact list building is also one of the best ways to streamline your email marketing efforts and build trust with your subscribers. Not only is it cheaper and more efficient, but it’s also far more effective.

Are you looking for more ways to optimize your email marketing campaigns? We have a suite of powerful tools that will allow you to build campaigns in minutes. Packed with additional features, such as automated follow up emails, landing page builders, and more, our full-service email marketing package gives you everything you need to launch and run highly professional and impactful campaigns.

Sign up for a free trial today and leverage the power of streamlined email marketing.

© 2021 – 2020, Chris Duncan. All rights reserved.