What can I do wioth my blog comments?

[Attitudinest]

This may be a dumb question but I need to ask it.

I have some people who have placed legit comments to my blog posts.
They must leave me their email info to place these comments.
Is this the same thing as opting in?

Can I now go ahead and add them to my autoresponder list or is that considered spamming them.

Thanks in advance.

...David

[jimchicago]

Re: What can I do wioth my blog comments?

That's not a dumb question :) . . . it's an interesting question, and it's not easy to find a direct answer to it online. I just did a Google search on "blog commenters' e-mail address opt-in" and took a (fairly quick) look thru the first three pages. I couldn't find a direct answer to that question.

What I did find were several mentions of the "double opt-in" method of collecting e-mail addresses: That is, once a visitor gives his/her e-mail address, the marketer (you) should have an autoresponder message sent to that address asking the person to confirm that they do in fact want to be added to your mailing list.

This method is now an e-mail-marketing-industry standard and a common-sense "best practice" that you'd be wise to follow. I believe you can set up autoresponder messages like this in your VH cPanel.