People tend to forget their subscriptions. Sometimes they don't even know why they subscribed to your newsletter. Especially if the person is seeking for information, he/she will subscribe to every ezine or ecourse that will come across their search. They don't remember it after a while. If you send email to them after few months, they simply accuse you of sending spam.

So how to safegaurd yourself from this type of accusations?

Follow up and Mailing list management software: You can manage your ecourses, broadcasts, follow ups with this single software-

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/follow-up-autoresponder-pro/index.shtml

1. Provide their personal details in every email:

On top of each email, put their email address, their ip number with which they subscribed, URL of the form where they subscribed, list name they subscribed. This way your subscribers are aware of that you have their details with their permission.

You only gets the subscriber ips when he/she subscribes using a form. If they subscribed using email addresses, the ip will not be grabbed by your autoresponder software.

2. Use Double opt-in:

Some of the marketers say that 'You have to make it easy for the subscriber to receive your emails'. So people tend to neglect to implement double opt-in. They think that it will be a hassle for subscriber to click on the confirmation link in the email. Remember one thing... if they are really interested they will click, not one... more than that to receive information from you. This type of list is best to target your information and to get some profits from it.

3. 'Unsubscribe' link:

Put 'Unsubscribe' link in every email in the footer area. Sometimes subscribers subscribe using subscriberATdomain.com, redirects his email to subscriberATdomain2.com. Then he tries to unsubscribe using second email, which obviously not in your database and he can't be removed by your software. Then he/she will get upset that you are sending spam. So tell them that use the same email address that they used to subscribe, to unsubscribe. You can put this information under your unsubscribe link.

4. Privacy statement:

Create a tag in your autoresponder like [privacy_statement], if your software allows it. Then put this tag in all email below 'Unsubscribe' link. Let this privacy statement should be similar that you put on the subscription form web page. If your autoresponder software don't allow tags, then put url to your privacy satement on your web page.

5. Authentication Seals:

Recently I came across this site where they provide email marketers a special code that goes with headers of your email(s), making them legitimate.

http://www.habeas.com/servicesHowSWEWorks.php

There is another one:

http://www.truste.org/businesses/email_services.php

Radhika Venkata (c)