Remember the days of junk mail in your mailbox? Those who spent the time to go through direct mail marketing never considered it junk mail. After all they spent the time to purchase bulk mailing from the post office, printing costs, and of course, demographic research. Once the introduction of email marketing came into play, the snail mail version of junk mail disappeared and we are now fighting the spam markets to keep the junk mail in our electronic mail boxes to a minimum. So how do you utilize an opt-in list while refraining from carrying the junk mail stigma to the next level?

First and foremost, run only opt-in email marketing campaigns. Cultivating an email list is not hard provided that those involved are seriously interested in your email content. Once you start spamming, it is all downhill from there.

Just like when direct mail marketing came to our snail mail boxes, there was a certain amount of demographics involved. There isn't much point in sending off gender or age specific marketing materials to the wrong gender or age bracket. During the process of collecting your email addresses you need to make sure there is enough information to ascertain whether or not they are the correct demographic. Keep in mind, however, that not all profiles are entirely accurate. If you are selling children's clothing and you have several people who opted-in for your material and their profile doesn't indicate that they have children, you might be missing a marketing opportunity since they are buying a tremendous amount of clothing for a niece or nephew because the family is experiencing hard times. Rather than asking specified questions, ask behavioral questions, such as how often do you purchase children's clothing?

A lot of websites simply have their visitors click a box if they are interested in receiving email promotions or information. This can help build your opt-in list, but it won't give you any type of profile and you won't have the information necessary to know whether you are marketing correctly to any particular email address. Some websites sneak in their opt-in information by having people uncheck the box if they are not interested. This method doesn't necessarily build a better list. It might build a bigger list, but only temporarily. People don't like to feel tricked and even if you send them something very useful, they may delete it anyway because you went around them to get the information to them. People that will actually take the time to fill out their information and actually check a box are more likely to read your material and respond to it. It is better to have one healthy and active recipient than ten disgruntled users.

Simple techniques like offering a guestbook for people to sign on their way in or out of your website or holding special free promotions care a good way to get not only the email addresses that you need to build your list but also to get a better idea about where they fit on your demographics page. Provided that your users are happy with the way you go about it, many people will stop and take the time to fill out some information to help you serve them better. People like to be helped and people enjoy being able to express their opinion, especially when it relates to something specific about themselves. The more you give people a chance to talk about themselves (or fill out information about themselves) the more engaged they end up feeling and the more likely they are to develop a relationship with your website in their mind. Once they have completed that process, your opt-in emails are more likely to be read.

Join forces with someone who is either already building a list or who is interested in getting started. Sometimes when you split the energy associated with marketing you can end up creating twice the results in half the time. Don't forget that there are offline methods of building a strong list as well, especially if you have access to large, revolving groups of people.

Use your opt-in list carefully. Don't ever go outside the scope of acceptable in order to grab just a few more email addresses. As profitable as a good opt-in list is, refusing to adhere to the strict anti-spam laws can result in watching your opt-in list being dismantled and all your hard work dwindling down the drain. Familiarize yourself with the current laws and adhere to them to make sure that your time, money, and effort are put to the best use possible.