If you never learn another lesson about email marketing, remember that you can never, ever betray the trust of the members of your email address database. If someone chooses the bulk email opt in for your email list, then they are only giving you explicit permission to contact them. If you should sell or give away that email list to another company for their own purposes, you will quickly find that your email address database dwindles and becomes far less powerful.
Formerly successful email marketing specialists will tell you that it was the kiss of death for their company once they shared their email address database with others. Now, you have to keep in mind, you are not only NOT doing the other company any favors by giving away or selling your list (because, after all, aren’t these customers already loyal to you?), but you are certainly compromising the quality of your own email marketing leads.
Getting people to join your bulk email opt in list is challenging. If you are not careful, you can lose those people from your email address database and you will be left with an email list that is not very useful. When customers find out that you have sold or given away their email addresses, they will be very likely to report you as a spammer, which will ultimately cause you big problems since the entire point of email marketing is to get people to read your emails and respond to the offers.
If you think that you will fool your customers, you are most likely wrong. Customers are getting more and more savvy about how email marketing leads are used, and they are paying attention to where their email address goes and what choices they have when it comes to bulk email opt in lists. They will catch on, and when they do, your marketing campaign will certainly suffer. Do yourself a favor and keep your email address database safe and secure! Never share the addresses with anyone.