Chances are if people haven't requested to receive an email from you then you are wasting time. Let me guess your routine:

-Select a list of names.
-Type in subject and body text
-Click send.

Then your email is sent to as many people as you want, even thousands. So why aren't they replying or jumping at your offer? Well it could because they consider it spam(meaning they didn't request it). So probably right now your great offer and email are sitting in a Spam folder, Trash bin or they haven't checked their email and haven't gotten a chance to delete it, yet. So basically all of your time and effort as well as your money is also sitting in your trash bin. But why?

It is very simple. Just like the many number of flyers and ads we receive through regular post(which most of them end up in the garbage), people hate to get mail(email or not) that they have not requested. Sure we every so often get a coupon in the mail we love to use but other then that it is just a waste of our time. For the amount of spam that we get takes alot of time to either delete. It also gets frustrating even when we set up our filters that some emails still get through(or good emails get put into our bulk folder). Alot of time even a good email is mass produced to be sent out to hundreds of people and usually doesn't address us. It is just a template that you use. Which leads us to our next problem with this.

Even more so today you have to protect your pc. When ever I see an email I don't recognize or something I didn't sign up for I immediately think "is this spam or is this a virus". Which then usually leads me to delete it without even reading the offer inside. This is because there are so many people out there sending spam and viruses via email that no matter how good your offer is or how much money I will save. If I open up an email that has a virus, it will probably cost me alot more time, money and headaches to get it fixed then all of the offers out there combined. So it isn't worth the hassle.

Now with so much spam out there don't be afraid to address possible clients via email, just make sure you personalize it as much as you can. Just remember this saying. If it looks like spam, acts like spam and I didn't request it. Then it is probably spam and I will delete it.