An opt-in email list can bring you years of very good business, especially if you take the time to building from scratch and maintain it with care. Your opt-in email list may very well be your most important internet marketing tool. An opt-in email list is nothing more than a list of names and email addresses that you receive because people are interested either in the topic you offer or what you have to offer them. Most of the time, people offer business advice, business building tips, and of course, a business opportunity. Building one of these lists is so important that the sale of a cultivated opt-in list can run in the thousands.

Make sure that it is easy for your visitors to sign up for your email list by pacing the sign up in a highly visible area.

Developing subscription cards to carry with you for events and meetings and trade shows helps you build a list. Never just sign someone up, but if you go to an event, carry a few cards.

Always welcome all new subscribers with a personal message. Remind them why they are subscribing and how much you appreciate their subscription. Make sure that you have demonstrated why people would want to be on your list. What are you offering and why is it valuable? Sell the list first, and then worry about selling yourself.

Do not ever spam. Do not add people who have not opted-in and take people off immediately once they have opted out. Never purchase a list that doesn’t specifically state obviously that it is an opt-in list and always be ready with a proof offering. You can get in a lot of trouble these days for sending unsolicited email.

VerticalResponseis a good email marketing service and offers a free “test drive” so you can try it before you buy it. The program is great for computer novices with an easy-to-use interface.

The service lacks some of the features the higher-ranking websites offer. The service doesn’t support Unicode or international character sets, nor, can you create demographic filters or track forwarded emails.

To ensure your emails are properly delivered, you can run a SPAM check and send a test email to yourself before you send it out to your customers. This program will also automatically add an unsubscribe link to the bottom of the email.

However, we really like that VerticalResponsecan integrate with Google Analytics.

Through VerticalResponseyou can create a plain text email message, use a pre-existing template or a freeform where you can upload your HTML page. However, if you choose to upload an HTML into the program for your email, your source code cannot exceed 31KB (31950 characters), including the white spaces.

The reporting section is located on the homepage dashboard. The page includes all the campaigns you’ve sent. It will show you summary of how many emails were sent, opened, bounced, unsubscribed and display the number of times each link was clicked.

There is also a report based on the email domain. This shows how many of the emails have been sent, opened, clicked, bounced and unsubscribed by a specific domain name like Yahoo.com, MSN.com and others.

You can download and compare reports to strategize your marketing further. You can also use all this in conjunction withGoogle Analytics.

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