- The above study by Hubspot studies the problem of database decay and concludes that every year, your e-mail marketing database degrades by around 22.5%. Apart from having less and less effective e-mails every year, imagine what impression you would create if you sent an e-mail with an inaccurate custom field.

- If the e-mail list is not upto date, you might end up e-mailing someone who used to be a product manager at a company last year but has now shifted his business elsewhere. By addressing him as the product manager of the old company, the first impression you make is a negative one. This bought e-mail lists are not up-to-date and accurate.

3. Too much personalization, too soon
Too much personalization is as bad as too less. Personalization is attractive, sure, but only when the customer already knows you.

- Receiving an e-mail from a business with which you haven’t interacted with at all that contains personal details about you or your business isn’t good relationship managing, it is downright creepy. 

- See this example of an e-mail where in the first ever e-mail sent the marketer discloses that s/he has already made an intimate study of the business of the e-mail recipient. Hereare some examples of really bad e-mail marketing techniques.

- The tons of spam emails are exactly why customers may never open your email. The Federal Trade Commission, for instance, allows customers to report against unsolicited mails, so you have to be really careful.

Check out our email marketing automation reviews page to see how you can easily create personalized emails that automatically get sent to the right person at the right time.

4. Email people without their permission

This is a big one. Whether you’re thinking about stealing or buying a list, you need to stop and realize the huge negative effects that kind of email marketing can have on your business and your marketing. It’s not worth it. Even when you’re signing people up for your own list, you should be careful - a confirmation email is always a good idea. Be careful not to blast out emails to lists you've bought, you should always use opt-in forms on your website.

5. Fail to deliver on your promises

Remember what I said about incentives? Well, make sure that you can deliver on whatever incentive you promised, and right away, too. This is your first exposure to your prospect. Make it look good! 

6. Make it difficult to opt-out

OK, so there’s a lot of debate about this one. But honestly, if you make it harder for people to opt-out of your email list, you’ll be more likely to end up in spam folders. Frustrated readers who want to get rid of your emails will mark your email as trash or spam without reading, leading to a bad image for your marketing campaign. Plus, you don’t want those people anyway, right?

What should you do?
Now that it is clear what not to do, it is important to know what to do. Here are some of the things that you should be definitely doing when creating your email list.

Research
You can’t build a good email list until you know whose emails you want. What’s your demographic? Individuals? Businesses?

Get more specific. Men? Women? How old? Get as detailed as you possibly can and then take the next step: where will you find those people? Do you know? If so, then that’s where you need to be getting emails.

Use what you already have
Do you really want a great quality list of prospects already interested in your product? Then you need to take advantage of every other type of marketing you got. Do you have a business website? Put a few opt-ins in a sidebar or (better) have a pop-up opt-in that visitors can quickly put their emails in. A great way to build credibility and trust with your subscribers is to send out a weekly or monthly email newsletter full of unique quality content that provides real value to your audience.

Play around with different mediums, always directing your marketing to what should be the focus of your marketing strategy: your email list. 

Provide incentives
While many people try to build their own email list, they’ll have some kind of advertising that amounts to, ‘give us your email so we can send you emails.’ I’m going to tell you right off the bat that that’s really an awful incentive.

Offer an ebook, or a whitepaper, or something. This is where you need to do your research too. What does your demographic want? What can you offer them?

Which is the best method to use?
While there are many methods used to create an e-mail database, one of the best and easiest methods is to use e-mail marketing software. There are many good options in the market, such as Aweber, Getresponse, Convertkit, Streamsend and Active Campaign.

These websites allows you to collect your own database of e-mail addresses by creating your own opt-in form and then using it on your website. The biggest benefit of these sites is that you do not need any coding knowledge for this process.

How do you use Aweber?
If you are thinking to go in for Aweber, here is how the whole process works. Following are the steps to avail a one-month free trial and create your own e-mail marketing list:

Step 1. Signing up for a trial – Go to the Aweber website and choose to sign up for a free 30 day trial. You will now be directed to a form where you need to fill out essential details.