High Volume because there are a lot of them; Familiar because you recognize the senders' names; Leave Alones because you never open their emails.

You've thought about unsubscribing from their list, but then someday you might have more time to read what they clearly think is so important, and someday they might have something un-missable.

But the one time you did actually read something from them it didn't make you want to sing from the rooftops. So, deep down, you know its unlikely you'll ever actually read their mails again. Still, for the time being, because its not making your hair stand on end, you're happy to let these HVFLA's sit around and go unread in your inbox.

I'm terrible. My inbox heaves with FLAs. Maybe I give the benefit of the doubt too easily. There are several people who email me regularly and although I barely take the blindest bit of notice about what they're saying, I have formed an opinion of them. Sometimes its good, sometimes not. Either way, I don't unsubscribe enough.

And lets face it, its so much better than it was in the days of uncontrolled spam. Back then I used to take a heavy brush to my email box and delete them in droves, and even that wasn't enough. They were everywhere - I'd spend half an hour every morning ridding myself of useless offerings of viagra, or high-flying stocks and shares, or the promise of a huge manhood in just 30 days... sometimes I'd be a little clumsy and delete some important emails in the process.

Phew! Lets take a moment to thank the Good Lord for anti-spam software.

Yes, things are definitely better now.

But if you send email regularly to your opt-in list, how can you prevent them becoming HVFLAs? Here I will recommend a few tactics I use to build loyalty from my lists.

Its important in your early emails to introduce yourself well. Give some background about who you are, why you know what you do, and why people listen to you about it. Cut the groove between modesty and conceit, you don't want too much of either but before your list will do anything, its got to respect you first.

Autoresponders make our life easier. You can plan what you're going to say and when you're going to say it, load the mails into your autoresponder and then leave it on autopilot knowing everyone will get their mail on time as you planned. Great, that's the technicalities dealt with, but what are you going to deliver? What can you do to keep a prospect's attention through to mailing 5?

OK well here are some ideas...

You can do an e-course on your chosen subject of interest. This is a good starting point because if its planned well it will take your prospects through a learning process in sequential order. They will need all ten emails to benefit. I offer courses such as this at listmission.com and thefreedomlist.com. Once the course is over, those who have completed it have something to thank me for. I've educated them on profitable websites and list-building and for that, I maintain their trust and loyalty through the further mails I send them.

Of course you can't please everybody all the time and you're bound to get some dropping off, but that's no bad thing. If they're really not interested in your subject-matter after all then you don't want them anyway.

You can tell a story. Engage your prospects with a sequential trail of discovery plotting a series of events to do with your subject of interest. Like a good novelist, try and leave them on the edge after the end of each chapter so they have a burning desire to read your next mail.

Just remember this: You can lead a horse to water, but sometimes it will only drink if it wonders what the water tastes like. Your list won't always be thirsty, but you can keep their interest by raising curiosity in the same way. Phrases like - Be prepared for anything you might find inside the member's area, there are surprises waiting - for example, will get your list curious for more.

If you don't feel the inspiration to write anything yourself, you can always outsource it to someone else - or, at no cost, you can simply download some articles from ezinearticles.com or any other article directory. Then put them into a sensible order and interject with your own comments and recommendations. If you use this method, just be sure to leave in the copyright info and any links the author has included. You might think that this isn't nearly as good as writing your own material, but as long as you add some value to it with your own input, insight or just in the way you tie them together then it can be very effective.

Another idea is to automate reminders about your product or service after you've announced it. For example, if you announce an offer is available for a limited time only, remind your customers 3 or 4 times before the deadline date arrives with increasing urgency each time. This also works if you've caught their attention with news of a future product launch. Keep reminding them of how close it is to the launch date. Build some buzz.

These are some of the rules I've followed while building listmission.com. I make good money from the site and I receive good testimonials from my customers. I'm sure a lot of it is to do with following these rules.

Something to remember when building a web business is that the value of the business relates directly to the size of your list. Whatever your online business, and however clever it is technically, its your list and more importantly, your relationship with it, that determines its real value.

Come and find me if you need help with your list building.