Whether you paid for search engine placement, received an unsolicited order from a new customer, met someone at a tradeshow or mailed out a postcard to prospects, be sure to get the person’s email address right up front. Request it in your forms online, in your surveys, on prize drawing forms at tradeshows – any promotion or marketing effort you mount. These emails are the foundation of your mailing list because these people have either become customers or have shown interest in becoming a customer.

A list built through referrals and your own marketing efforts is far more desirable than purchasing a list of 100,000 strangers from a list house. Unless you have a very narrow demographic in mind, purchasing a list is virtually useless.

Be sure you keep your list up to date. Whenever an address kicks back as undeliverable, find out why. If the targeted recipient changed their email address and you have their phone number in your records, call them and ask for the new address. People are notorious for changing accounts regularly without ever thinking of the consequences.

If a recipient asks to be removed, remove them promptly. If you never hear from a particular customer at all in two years, take them off the list. Before you do, though, send them an email saying something to the effect that “since we haven’t heard from you, we wanted to make sure our mailing list is correct. If you received this and want to continue to hear from us, please let us know by clicking here.”