A friend of mine asked me recently “how do I get my email lists going?”. He knew he needed to get his message out to more people, but wondered how you go about building up your own lists without buying in any data? Not only is this a common question from start-ups and small businesses, but often one asked when clients of ours have established email programs where their list size may be stagnating or even shrinking. I had also just finished reading this excellent article on the same subject over at EmailCritic.com which inspired some thoughts here.

A great phrase I can borrow (doffing my cap to Tim Watson, Email Consultant, in the process) is don’t fall in to the trap of “FIRE! AIM! READY!” which is often what people do when they realise they need email addresses. That is to say, put together the plan of what you want to try to achieve first before going about implementing any random new scheme to collect addresses.