The saying "Quality, not Quantity" is applicable even to the world of email marketing. So many organizations are purchasing large databases of email addresses, with hopes to achieve high open rates and sales. The truth is that you are more likely to achieve your campaign goals if you send an email out to 100 targeted individuals than you would to 10,000 randomly purchased email addresses.

There is a common misconception when it comes to the quantity of emails in your email list. A lot of business owners think that the key to running successful email campaigns is to send their emails out to thousands and thousands of email addresses and this is commonly achieved through the purchase of large databases. This way of thinking about email marketing is wrong and will only result in discouragement and campaign failure.

When you purchase email lists from companies, you can never be too sure how they acquired these email addresses in the first place. Often, large databases of email addresses have been collected in ways that are misleading to the users providing their email addresses. This means that the individuals to whom you are sending your email are not sincerely interested in what you have to say. You also risk being labeled a "spammer", because spam is essentially what you'd be sending- unwanted email.

Though this is a very straight forward concept, this is still one of the most challenging aspects of email marketing campaigns. We realize that building your own email list from scratch can be an intimidating task, but if you start doing it regularly you will be shocked with the number of targeted email addresses you will collect in a short period of time.

Start sending emails to people who are actually interested in what your organization has to say. Concentrate your marketing efforts on targeted email lists and you will notice a huge increase in your open rates and sales. Email marketing definitely works- you just have to do it the right way.

Michelle Lehoux