Building an email list is like building a business. Taking shortcuts to hurry the process along, such as turning to third-party mailing list rental or purchase, can backfire in a big way. Use your best selling tactics to promote your email list-building campaign, just like any marketing campaign you use to sell your products or services.

The potential ROI on email newsletters and other e-marketing campaigns is immense, often higher than any other marketing or advertising option. Which leads some to ask, why not just buy or rent a promising-looking list from a broker and start mailing to it? Because these addresses lack relevance, interest and trust, the three key ingredients that support every successful email marketing program. The reason why email marketing can produce such a high Return on Investment is because you typically have these three ingredients with legitimate email recipients. Otherwise:

* Relevance: You’re sending email to people who didn’t ask for it, which equals spam to most recipients, no matter how regulations may define unsolicited email.
* Interest: You also have absolutely no idea if they will be interested in your company, products or services.
* Trust: Unsolicited email can make recipients suspicious, which can cloud any future contacts they may have with your company.

At best, you might get a few nibbles, but the $$ spent on those email addresses could have been better directed elsewhere, like a search marketing program designed to attract browsers to your opt-in or preference center. More likely, enough recipients will complain via the spam button to prompt ISPs either to filter or block your email marketing.

As with any marketing campaign, your list-building program has an objective, strategies to achieve it, and ways to measure whether you achieved it. Yes, you want to create and build a mailing list. But with what kind of subscribers? Create a profile of your ideal email subscriber, and use it as a template to guide your strategies and tactics.

Also, be able to clearly define the content, format and frequency of your messages to be able to communicate the benefits of subscribing. Here are some strategies that can help you achieve your list-building goals.

1) Transparent and trustworthy email opt-in process: Permission is both the law in most countries of the world today and the expectation among email users. A transparent opt-in process explains exactly how to sign up for email, what recipients can expect and how you will use the information they give you. Provide this information on your opt-in or preference page with a link to your privacy policy.

2) Relevant, well-written and useful content: You can’t build a list without good content. (That is a primary focus for everything written by HTA, high-quality content is job #1!) As your program grows, track and analyze activity on your messages to see what does or does not engage subscribers.

3) Benefit-based invitations at every place where you encounter your customers or potential subscribers. First, tell subscribers what they’ll get in exchange for giving up their email address, “Sign up here for email-only discounts…” is far more enticing than “Sign up for our emails.” Then place this invitation where you will encounter customers or prospects, like posting on various pages of your site and seeing which one generates the most action. At Hat Trick Associates, we have quite a few other ideas on how to uniquely and effectively share your invitation that we share with clients.

You can measure your success in a number of ways. How many email subscribers do you want by what deadline? Setting a goal of 10,000 active subscribers in six months is good, but you need to factor in list churn and inactivity of up to 50 percent in order to achieve it. That could raise your goal to 15,000 subscribers in order to come up with an active base of 10K.

This sounds like a big challenge, but you increase your chances of gaining active email subscribers when you lay the groundwork first with a trustworthy opt-in process, engaging content, a wide network of invitations and careful list management.