I don't really want to buy a bulk email list, but what other options do I have to build subscribers?

The other options you have is SEARCH. Email is NOT a tool for prospecting, especially to names that have been rented. If someone offers to SELL you the data (rather than rent), then it is FLAT OUT SPAM.

In the US, Canada, most of Europe and Asia, you can't send mass email to folks unless they have explicitly subscribed or you already have a business relationship with them.

Use SEARCH, it's the best way to get in front of customers who want to see what you have, and it has an immediate impact.

As an FYI, I'm not a SEARCH expert but I am an Email Marketing expert.

Mr. Mike Lee,

I would be interested in understanding more on your thoughts. Can you please detail?

thanks
Pedro Luis

Buying a list is often fraught with problems. For one, many lists contain "spam traps" which are email addresses that ISPs immediately tag from the list and then tag you as a spammer and block you from emailing recipients that use their ISP. Problem is, you don't know which emails are the traps.

Here are some tried and true ways to build your subscriber list quickly:
1. Engage with a trade publication that your target audience reads - set up a webinar on a topic of interest to your target audience and promote it through the publication. Have the pub include a notice that all registrants will receive email from your company and give them the option to opt-out. If your publication has a strong list and you have an engaging topic, you should attract a few hundred names you can now legally email.

2. Develop a search marketing strategy that includes engaging, interesting, and valuable free offers with links to HIGHLY RELEVANT landing pages that are specific to that offer. Include a registration form to get to the offer. Now everyone who registers gets added to your list.

3. Use an email marketing tool like ConstantContact or a marketing automation platform like Marketo to manage your email list and start a nurturing campaign to qualify and nurture your email list over time. This will help you start identifying the qualified leads.

4. Measure the effectiveness of each lead source to know where to invest your marketing dollars.

5. Repeat steps 1-4 :-)

I have been learning a bit about this and looking at what I was tought, the following factors need to be considered.
1) Do a spam count on your mailer
2) When you sentit or have it sent, then send less that 5 e-mails a second.
3) Consider if e-mail is your best option, we do both e-mail and sms in South Africa and sms/MMS seems to be the better option.
4) Verify that your data base that you buy is correct and up to date.

If I can help any more then please let me know.

Pieter Badenhorst(pieter@t-r-m.co.za)

Agree with George, the future of email as an awareness / acquisition tool is bleak - and it's obsolescing rapidly.

Load small lists (like 100 at a time). Look out for honey pots (emails planted to signal to an ISP or ESP that your spamming). Ideally, you should manually verify every email address your sending to is someone you really want to communicate with.

People want signal not noise. In order to get signal they must define their interests and run a contextual filter to deliver high signal to noise to each individual based on defined interests and some fuzzy algorithm higher order logic.
Hierarchical Temporal Memory is a learning algorithm that will learn what each wants to receive and can do a high noise threshold filter on the main trunk of content.

A database has their defined signal and in vector space you cam employ a shortest distance search vector to find matching criteria. The orthogonal properties of multiplying 2 vector spaces does a lot of noise removal.