Collect Subscribers Offline: Do’s & Don’ts

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Posted by Justin Premick

Using a website opt-in form to collect subscribers is a great, automated way to build your list.

Many publishers want to collect subscribers offline too. Done right, this can be a valuable asset in your email marketing arsenal.

However, not every email address that comes your way offline belongs to someone who wants to be on your list.

How do you tell which ones you should add to your list — and which ones you shouldn’t?

Assume Nothing

This should go without saying, but you don’t want to try to add everyone who might want your messages.

Seems simple enough. But people have a tendency to mistakenly assume permission when it’s not explicitly given.

Here’s an example:

You meet Joe at a business lunch. You talk for a few minutes, exchange business cards and go your separate ways.

A week later you’re at your desk, and you see his card sticking out from underneath your cell phone.

So, you add Joe to your list, right? Right?

Wrong. Very wrong.

Business cards are given out for a lot of reasons, not just to subscribe to a list. Unless this person specifically asked you to add them to your list, don’t do it.

Opt-in list management is a simple concept in theory, but it’s easy to fall victim to the temptation of doing something just like that, that simply isn’t an opt-in practice. This is especially true offline.

Offline Situations: Opt-In or Not?

There’s a difference between providing contact information to be subscribed to a newsletter and say, providing it so that I can call you back about setting up a meeting. And there are a whole lot of reasons in between.

So, to help guide you, we’ve put together a list of potential list-building tactics, and discuss which ones are — and aren’t — OK to use here at AWeber. (For the record, if it’s not OK to use here, you really shouldn’t be using it at all.)

In deciding if an email address collected offline is opt-in or not, consider two things:

How you got that address
Why it was provided to you

You should look everywhere for opportunities to build your list. Be innovative! Just make sure you’re getting permission from your subscribers.

AWeber Knowledge Base: Can I Use This List?

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17 Responses

Michele Dortch
February 8th, 2007 at 12:06 pm

Yes! One of my BIGGEST peeves in business networking is having someone add me to their newsletter list without my permission. Especially, when I later see them brag about the size of their list. As you posted in an earlier post…list size doesn’t matter if that majority of your subs were strong-armed into signing up!

When I meet people offline that I think would benefit from my newsletter, I ask, "Are you interested in receiving my monthly newsletter by email?" Once I manually add them, they have the chance to re-confirm their interest via AWeber’s double opt-in process (which I love!).

Thanks for this post and reminding us of the importance of permission-based Internet marketing.
Dawud Miracle
February 8th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

Nice post. I agree with what you’re saying. I think anytime be begin keeping a database of contacts/leads, we need to raise our level of responsibility for those leads. And if converting a leads base to clients is what drive your business, then the utmost integrity is required
The Isolated Entrepreneur » Adding email addresses to your subscriber list
February 8th, 2007 at 2:40 pm

[…] To get a clear picture of when you can add a contact to an email list, read AWeber’s “Collect Subscribers Offline: Do’s and Don’ts“. […]
Chris Lockwood
February 8th, 2007 at 10:42 pm

I just use business cards with my site URL (that has my aweber form on it). That way people who I meet in person can sign themselves up just like anyone else, and there’s no valid reason for them to complain.
Can you add a business card to your subscriber list? « The Isolated Entrepreneur
February 9th, 2007 at 7:05 am

[…] To get a clear picture of when you can add a contact to an email list, read AWeber’s “Collect Subscribers Offline: Do’s and Don’ts“. […]
John
February 9th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

Justin,

I’m curious why the comments information block on your blog here bothers to ask for web site information but you use the nofollow tag on the URLs? Have you had a problem with blog spamming?

Thanks
Tom Kulzer
February 9th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

John,

Nofollow is just for search engines. It’s the Wordpress default as far as I know and discourages blog spam posts. It in no way affects real users which is the reason we publish this blog. To help the community be better email marketers.
Adding Offline Contacts to Your Mailing List | Internet Home Business
February 10th, 2007 at 8:20 am

[…] Here’s what Justin Premrick wrote on the Aweber blog: […]
Ruth
February 12th, 2007 at 7:42 am

Hi,
Can we reprint this article on our own blogs? It is such an important point for opt in lists,
Justin Premick
February 12th, 2007 at 5:16 pm

Hi Ruth,

Yes, you’re welcome to reprint this as long as you leave it as-is and include a resource box (I’ll send it to you).
Joar Kamara
February 13th, 2007 at 7:28 pm

Good post. I totally agree with you!

Best regards
Joar
Denise O'Berry
February 17th, 2007 at 8:10 am

Congratulations for addressing this issue. I’ve harped on this for a long time. It became such a tough issue for me that I had two sets of business cards printed — one without my email address. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
morphodesigns.com » Blog Archive » List Building
February 21st, 2007 at 11:04 pm

[…] My friend Crystal Pina, of VisionsVirtualAssistance.com, wrote an excellent post about using business cards to build your list of subscribers. Are You Spamming? reveals a surprising mistake that nearly all networkers make. Thankfully, Crystal shows you how to avoid this potentially disastrous landmine. An even more detailed treatment is given by one of the industry leading email marketing managers, AWeber.com. In Collect Subscribers Offline: Do’s and Don’ts, Justin Premick elaborates on Crystal’s post, providing a link to a helpful list of potential list-building tactics, some of which are definite no-no’s. Be sure to check out both of these posts: they may just keep you out of trouble with the CAN-SPAM act. […]
Gert Hough
March 28th, 2007 at 3:24 am

Thank you for great information. Offline marketing is something I strongly believe in yet I’ve never come so far as to start doing it.

Thank you Michele Dortch for clearing up a question I had related to this post - I wasn’t sure if you could just add the potential subscriber (with his/her consent) Now I know.
Nelson Tan
March 29th, 2007 at 12:11 am

Aweber has raised a very good point with its article. My personal practice has always been to treat fresh leads as COLD leads. Never presume people are already warm to you on first encounter. It is always better to prepare an introductory message as a courtesy call and leads filter, describing:

1) yourself, your business and the benefits of your products and services,
2) how you get their e-mail addresses or contact number in the first place (just to remind them)
3) and a call-to-action asking them to proactively subscribe to your list to learn more about your business.

With regards to point 3, "some will, some won’t, so what? NEXT!" Some cold leads will remain cold and fall out. You may like to mail them a second time, but not anymore than that.

The whole point of the activity is to qualify leads for future prosperity. In this manner, patience does pay.
Alex barbera
August 8th, 2007 at 12:57 am

I’ve heard many times that it is possible to have thousands of subscribers to your newsletter even if you don’t have a website/blog. What do you guys think? I’ve been searching through ezines and still can’t figure it out.
Richard Mclaughlin
February 4th, 2008 at 4:24 am

I prefer the aweber way of opting in, I have another service that allows single opt in and I have a higher withdraw rate from that service. With an opt-out on a single opt-in list there seems to be the complaint issue more often.