According to a MarketingSherpa survey of 1,100 email marketers, the most effective tactic for building an email list is to require people to opt-in to an email list when they buy a product or download a free gift.

Here, in order, are the top 10 list building tactics rated ‘somewhat effective’ or ‘very effective’ by MarketingSherpa’s respondents:

Ed Dale’s Melbourne Challenge Conference will take place on February 25, 26 and 27, 2011 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, in Melbourne, Australia. Aimed at beginning-to-advanced Internet marketers, conference organiser Ed Dale says the event will include presentations from top-notch speakers including SEO expert, Leslie Rohde, super-affiliate Lynn Terry, and copywriting expert and NLP master, Harlan Kilstein. The event is a must-attend for Australian based Internet marketers (normally starved of quality Internet marketing events) and highly recommended for overseas visitors. Just be sure to bring swimwear and sunscreen to get the most out of gorgeous Melbourne in summer! Go here for all the details including how to get tickets.

Internet Marketing Events Calendar »

Here at Kikabink we use, as well as promote, all kinds of Internet marketing tools. Internet marketing tools, systems and plugins designed to help build websites, attract traffic, pull in leads, build links, automate a raft of tasks, and so on. Heck, we’ve even built an entire domain name investment platform at Domainer Income that helps you find, evaluate, value, monetize and manage your domain names.

Used properly, Internet marketing tools can, indeed, help you build websites, generate traffic, get leads, build links, create content and accomplish all sorts of other Internet marketing tasks.

But NONE of them, alone, will make you a red cent.

I’m a big believer in learning from other people’s successes and failures, so my interest was piqued when I came across Bob Bly’s recent article on the reasons for why newsletters and direct mail pieces fail. Could the lessons apply to email newsletter publishers, bloggers and Internet marketers in general? You bet!

Bob Bly, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Direct Marketing (Alpha Books) and The Copywriter’s Handbook (Henry Holt & Co.) points to six reasons for why direct mail campaigns and newsletter typically fail. Let’s turn those reasons around and see if we can’t generate a list of six tips for producing a SUCCESSFUL email newsletter, blog or Internet marketing campaign.

Larry Chase, the publisher of email newsletter Web Digest For Marketers recently revealed 10 keys to his email marketing success. Larry has built his email newsletter from just 50 subscribers in April 14, 1995 to over 51,000 subscribers today. Employing an advertising-revenue based business model, the newsletter has also been profitable throughout this time.

Not all Larry’s tips may apply to the kind of newsletter or emails you send your list. They don’t necessarily align with the objectives of our Internet marketing newsletter, Kikabink News. For the most part, however, they are on the money. And, hey, you can’t argue with Larry’s success…

Alternative rock band Pearl Jam has launched the Just Breathe website to allows fans to tweet about the Pearl Jam song, ‘Just Breathe’ in return for a special code that allows them to download the song for free via iTunes.

When you tweet about the song you’re also automatically added to Pearl Jam’s @pearljam Twitter following. So, just as many Internet marketers do in the information marketing game, the band is basically offering a freebie in return for a sign-up.

Research by MarketingSherpa indicates that two-thirds of all email marketers grew their optin email lists in 2009, while only 3 percent of organizations experienced negative growth or subscriber attrition.

MarketingSherpa found that business-to-business (B2B) email marketers faced significant challenges during the year. Although B2B lists tend to be more stable than business-to-consumer (B2C) lists (which are more than six times likely to experience faster growth), job shifts and job losses led to a dramatic increase in lost email addresses among B2B lists.

A recent MarketingSherpa case study highlights the potential of running a contest to not simply boost your email list in the short-term, but as an ongoing method of building a quality list.

Last summer in 2008, CoolComputerBags.com began running an ongoing, monthly computer bag giveaway to build a list of qualified prospects for its computer bag products.

Here’s a quick tip if you want to minimize your chances of having your emails ignored or dumped in the spam folder: use the SAME email address whenever sending your emails to a specific list. Here’s why…

A portion of your list is likely to use ‘rules’ in their email program/reader so that emails sent by various senders automatically go into various folders. In my case I have rules and folders for EVERY individual and list I have given my email address to, so that rather than clog up my inbox, emails from those senders are automatically directed into their respective folders.

Research by Epsilon and ROI Research provides a snapshot of how many – and why – people in North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific unsubscribe from permission based emails.

The trends are likely due to cultural differences as well as the sheer amount of email people in different regions receive.