Opt-in email lists are the centerpiece of every highly successful email marketing campaign. There is a lot of money to be made in email marketing, but most novices go about it all wrong and think that spamming people will get them the business they need. It won't. And it can land you big fines, now that the CAN-SPAM Act is in place.

A permission based mailing list is the only way to go.

Without a good optin email list of your own, you are wasting your time trying to market goods and services, because people are savvy enough not to buy from people they haven't developed a relationship with yet. But if you don't yet have an opt-in marketing list of your own, don't worry–there are ways to build your own fairly rapidly.

Building an opt-in mailing list

Building an opt-in mailing list is a simple process, but the devil's in the details. It takes time to create something of value that your prospective readers (whom you want to become customers eventually) will want to opt into. You have to give them something worth their time, and this is where free reports come in.

One of the most powerful ways to build your marketing list is to offer free information that you are sure your target audience wants and needs. Do yourself a favor and make it worth their effort. If they trust you enough to submit their name and email address, then find that your information was useless to them, they are not likely to buy your products or services down the road.

There are several different types of opt-in and non-opt-in email lists:

• Single opt-in
• Double opt-in
• Purchased lists
• Compiled or "opt-out" lists

Single opt-in email lists

A "single opt-in" email list is where the user opted into the list by entering their email once with no confirmation. This type of list is not as valuable as a double opt-in list, because technically, someone who is not the owner of the email address can add them to the list. In other words, this type of list doesn't have the built-in assurance that the people on the list really want to be on the list. It's better to have some kind of double opt-in mechanism.

Double opt-in email lists

Double opt-in mailing lists are of much higher quality and value than single optin lists because there is built-in mechanism to ensure that the people on the list actually want to be there. A double opt-in mechanism is simple: After opting into the list, the new subscriber is sent an email confirmation requesting that a link be clicked to verify their request. This ensures that the person adding someone to a list has access to their email inbox; so it is safer to assume that the subscriber is who he says he is.

Purchased email lists and compiled email lists

It's always a terribly bad idea to try to sell products or services to a purchased email list, even if the sellers claims it is an opt-in email list. It almost never works, because the people on the list don't know the sender, so there is no relationship built up. Besides not working, it is annoying to get email (spam) that is unwanted, and could get you heavy fines if you cross the boundaries of the CAN-SPAM Act.

In addition, mailing to any list that is not permission-based can get you banned by your ISP from sending email if you're not careful. You can also be blacklisted so you can't send legitimate email.

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