Opt-In E-mailing Questions

Q:We're thinking about finding a very legit company that has 100% opt-in lists and who do email to a targeted market. We're especially looking to target the small/home business market to help get the word out about our JAYA123 service. Does anyone have any opinions about this method (remember I'm not talking spam here... but mail to only opt-in lists.)? And does anyone have any recommendations for legit firms that we might approach?

A:Any company that is offering to sell you a list is sending you off to spam. If they promise to send the email on your behalf, also beware. Ask them to put you on one of their lists. Look at the headers and see what domain the email comes from. Run that domain through a search at groups.google.com and look for spam complaints. If they can't provide the confirmation for the addresses on the list, it's not a valid list. Your ISP will probably shut down your web site if it is advertised via spam if they get a number of spam complaints. I have seen a number of these companies claim they only mail to opt-in lists, yet somehow, email addresses of mine that have never signed up for any list or confirmed a fake signup, have received spam from them. After detailed investigation about the only outfit that I felt I could have confidence in is postmasterdirect.com. But they are so expensive that I have decided to look into ezine advertising instead. Direct email marketing is just too dangerous. The last thing in the world we need is to be labled a spammer. It's not worth the gamble.... so we won't take it. We have a good budget for marketing and so far we have only spend a tiny part of it on press releases. We'd like to find some good, solid advertising venues to attract the home/small business sector. Suggestions? (besides Entrepreneur Magazine.... which is way to expensive IMO).