Business owners know that quality email contacts are challenging to get for marketing campaigns. Many people are hesitant to give their email addresses these days for fear of being bombarded with emails from companies that don’t know how much is too much. In addition to the difficult time it takes to acquire this information, a good database is also very hard to retain.

“Your email marketing database degrades by about 25 percent every year,” writes Andrew Pitre in a recent blog post for marketing software company, Hubspot. “Your contacts’ email addresses change as they move from one company to another, they opt-out of your email communication or they abandon that old AOL address they only use to fill out forms on websites.”

So, how can companies get new email contact information for their internet marketing? Here are three ways to get customers logging them in faster than you can say “email.”

1. Hold an online contest. Creating a contest with a prize for the winner is easy, and best of all, businesses can set it up so that anyone who wishes to register online must provide an email address.

2. Strike their Pinterest. Use the company’s Pinterest platform to create a promotion that interested parties must sign up for with their email address. The popularity of Pinterest has grown at one of the largest rates of any social media website, so doing this while it’s still new can generate a lot of new subscribers for your company.

3. Ask in person. Whether you mandate your employees ask at the in-store checkout, attend conferences and trade networking events or simply exchange business cards, a personal touch can make more people willing to sign up. Plus, it’s a lot harder to say no in person!