How to go out of your way to frustrate your email list subscribers A very common technique used by marketers to build an email subscription list is to offer a freebie in exchange to subscribing. For example, get our free report, free ebook, free PDF, free mp3, etc. Just enter your name and email address.What happens next varies but is some combination of receiving the freebie immediately via the web or by email. Sometimes you just get the freebie, sometimes you are bombarded with another sales pitch (come on, let me review the freebie first)! What doesn't vary is that you are now subscribed to a email subscription to something. The decent marketers require you to confirm your subscription (often the freebie doesn't come until this point). The sleazy marketers just want to collect emails, so they don't care if the email is yours, bogus or someone else's. For example, Modnique who wants to get social with me, sends me duplicate emails to at least 26 different email addresses at one of my domains, all not opted in or confirmed. Take a hint, you are really anti-social! Now, back to the freebies and email subscriptions. I am O.K. with this concept for getting a freebie. Nothing is really free, there is always some kind of exchange. In this case, my agreement to get an email subscription for the freebie. Just make sure you use an opt-in, confirm system so you don't get loaded up with a bunch of junk emails and annoy people who didn't opt in with your message. And, of course, have a suitable unsubscribe link with your messages. Now, to the annoying, frustration, completely anti-social aspect of this process. This morning I got a message from an email subscription I get because of a freebie I got from someone. I don't usually read their messages, but this morning I opened it up. It was more sales pitch than informative (come on guys, you can be a bit more creative than that). Now, this email was promoting a free mp3 that I could download. Of course, I had to do something first! I had to subscribe! So the overall process is kind of like this: 1) Subscribe to get freebie. 2) My subscription tells me I can get another freebie, all I have to do is subscribe! Come on! I am already subscribed. Just send me the freebie! How many times do you want me to subscribe? What benefit is there to having 2, 3, 4 or 10 subscriptions to your email list? There are a lot of people pushing a lot of stuff out there and you gotta be more creative than the next guy to stand out and get ahead. Trying to get me to subscribe to your email list over and over just isn't going to cut it. Expert Page: What is social engagement? | 
