Opening my email is sometimes a chore because of all the unsolicited spam e-mails that I receive from people trying to sell me prescription drugs or other things that I want even less. I don't think I need to be specific here, you know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you get the same e-mails. You and every single other person who's ever been on the internet. Anyway, at one point I was getting so many of these things that I bought some fancy spam-blocking software.

It cut down my spam a lot, and I was glad to finally be able to see the important messages from my boss, my family, and my two sons who are studying overseas in China and France. But then one day I noticed an e-mail about the latest and greatest in fashionable shoe design. "Oh no!" I thought, sure that the unsolicited e-mail spammers had struck again, and had found some way around my sophisticated spam-blocking software. But I opened the e-mail and found something I hadn't expected. It had nice, tasteful images, intelligent writing and, most importantly, it actually contained information that was both relevant and exciting to me as a consumer.

What was going on? I wondered. Then I noticed down at the bottom of the e-mail a small piece of text that said "You have been signed up for the stylish shoes consumer mailing list."  What was that? I had to find out for sure, so I went to Google and looked up the phrase and I found a whole bunch of information about them, and was excited to know what I'd seen. Apparently the idea is that these companies gather information from consumers like you or me about what sort of things we buy, what we're interested in, that kind of stuff. Then they put that together with our personal contact information and make it available to companies that are selling things we like.

So basically it's not spam, because if you don't like what you receive via e-mail you can just unsubscribe from it. Usually, as well, you won't even receive anything in the first place unless you've actually signed up for it somewhere. I checked around a little bit to see where I'd signed up for this one and found that the last time I'd bought shoes off Amazon, I'd checked a little box to sign up for their consumer mailing list. "Great!" I thought. Now I'll get all sorts of relevant information about shoes, which I love with a passion. Just ask my first husband, and he'll tell you that it's truer than anything.

In any case, a few weeks after the event of me getting that e-mail had passed, I was sitting around on my computer on a lazy Sunday afternoon after church looking at some nice summer dresses on a few online boutiques that I like to visit when I'm looking for new clothes for me or my family. I found that some of the thrill of looking had gone out of my online shopping, and after thinking about it for a while I realized the cause of it had to have been getting that e-mail. I mean, why should I spend all this time looking around on my own time when I could get targeted and relevant information straight to my inbox? It just didn't make any sense for me to do it myself any more.

So I looked around on the boutiques that I frequent online, hoping to see something similar I could sign up for that would cut my shopping work in half. And sure enough, there it was down at the bottom of the web pages: "Sign up for our consumer mailing list and get information about the products you like sent straight to your e-mail!"  Well, it should go without saying that of course I signed up for all the ones I could find right away. Shopping since then has been a breeze, and I look forward to opening up my e-mail inbox more than ever, because I know that sitting there waiting for me will be a few e-mails from the lists which tell me about the newest fashion and the finest clothes.

It's made me look at the Internet and e-mail in a whole new light, as well. Now, whenever I go into an online store I haven't visited before the first thing I look for isn't their current sales or the shipping cost, but whether or not they have a consumer mailing list that I can sign up for.

If you've been around the business world for any length of time and your job involves marketing, PR, sales, or some other aspect of business that involves getting information to consumers who are actually interested in receiving that information about the products and services which you can offer to them, then you have probably heard about the idea of sending out consumer mailing list. What you might not have heard of before is any actual explanation of what that is, or how exactly it can help you run your business at lower cost than you're doing right now, while reaching more consumers than before who are actually interested in your product. And that, as we all know, is the key to increasing sales!

So let me explain it to you, so that you'll see what a great benefit you can receive by signing up with a company that specializes in getting just the right consumer information to your doorstep, leaving you free to do what you do best, whether it be sales, PR, marketing, or whatever. In essence, when people buy things on the internet or sign up for websites, a lot of the time there are those little check boxes that say "would you like to sing up for our newsletter?" or "would you like to sign up to receive information from us or our business partners or third-party interests?"  I'm sure you know the ones I'm talking about; they're on just about every single website that asks for personal information like e-mails or names now.

In any case, all of that information obviously gets stored somewhere, and that information is pretty much what a consumer mailing list is in a nutshell. It's the contact information, personal interests, and names of people who said they would like to receive relevant advertising delivered directly to their e-mails. That's how it differs from unsolicited e-mail spam, of course, which is a completely different thing and much less useful in actually seeing an increase in sales.

Unsolicited e-mail spam is generated by automatic programs which search the internet for any people's e-mail addresses that have been left around on the web in text form. Once it has enough of those, then it just sends out all this junk mail that nobody really wants. Youv'e probably seen them in your own e-mails, and know how aggravating it can be to have to delete twenty-six e-mails selling viagra and liposuction per day. Well, this isn't like that at all, because of a few reasons.

First of all, these are things that people have actually signed up of their own volition to receive. That means that nobody will delete your well-crafted advertising the instant they see it sitting below that note from their grandmother. No, on the contrary they will open it up with delight because they asked to receive it themselves.

Secondly, the job of figuring out who to target has already been done for you, which means that everybody who sees your e-mail will actually be interested in whatever it is you have to offer, whether it be bicycles, skateboarding helmets, those little neon glow sticks the teenagers like so much, fine southern dining, or anything else you can come up with. Somewhere out there is a demographic that wants your product and nothing else, and it's through a consumer mailing list that you can reach that target consumer demographic with ease.

Finally, unlike unsolicited spam e-mails, which just keep coming in and piling up, anybody who changes their mind later on and decides that they don't, after all, want to hear from you any more can easily unsubscribe.  Although that may seem like a bad idea, it ensures that your brand name doesn't get dragged in the dirt by people who think you're now engaging in spamming, because they can easily remove their names from the list. The fact of the matter is that people very rarely do unsubscribe though. Why would they? After all, they signed up for the mails themselves, and it's about things that they're interested in.

So now that you know just what a consumer mailing list is, and how it's different from those unsolicited spam e-mails that we all hate so much, what are you waiting for? Go out and do a little bit of research into where you can get your hands on one! It'll save you a lot of time in the long run, because you won't have to do all that labor-intensive work of finding e-mails and consumer information on your own time.