Email marketing CAN be a pretty nice tactic to use for advertising/promotion.  However, I have to state that before you even bother to send out an email, make sure you are doing it the legit way.  Please don't send out spam email.  First off, its not ethical!  Second off, what do YOU do when you receive "spam" you don't want?  You probably do what every other person in the world does - you hit that little "mark as junk" button!  Paying someone to send emails is even worse.  You are essentially wasting your money that you could be spending on a more legit tactic! 

Email marketing is considered as one of the most effective ways of online marketing besides content creation services or article marketing.  With the proper SEO you can get a number of potential customers that visit your website. You can then get the addresses of them and stay in touch with them by emails by adding an optional "newsletter" option on your website. You can inform them about your new products or offers with your email. Sending an effective email can be very tricky. Most of the emails are recognized as spam by email providers. Even if they reach the inbox, they are oftentimes not read by the clients and will be deleted. Here are some tips for sending effective emails for attracting customers.

 - Collect the data of your customers and create separate segments like the customers who purchased one time, the customers who purchased more than once, the customers that didn't purchase, but want to be notified of sales, etc. You can use the available tools for creating targeted email campaigns such as iContact. Frankly, I used Aweber for years and years. But, after a few heated discussions with them I decided to quit the "world-wide leader in Email Marketing" and try someone else. It really depends on whom you want to work with when it comes to choosing a program and what options you want. Honestly, I use a sweet little FREE service called Mail Chimp. It does everything I need it to. Even if you needed to upgrade to add more emails to the account, it's still cheaper than Aweber. But, again - this will depend on you. After collecting their data, you can send personalized emails for grabbing their attention.

- Avoid using "spam" words. If you use spam words, your chances of going in someone's spam box triple. If the site you are using has a Spam Word Alert - use it! This is a nifty little program built inside the mailer that will tell you at what percentage your email seems "spammy". If its pretty low, say 1-10%, don't worry about it. However, if the program states that your email is considered 50% spam, you are going to want to change the wording. To find the most prevalent spam words to keep them OUT of your emails or newsletters, you can check out this link for 200 Spam Words to see more information

- Make sure the subject is simple and understood by everyone. Avoid capitalization, exclamation marks, weird symbols, etc., for not being flagged as spam by email providers or recipients. The shorter the subject the higher the chances of the receiver opening it. So keep the subject as short as you can, but detailed. The subject line should be related to the content of your email. Most of the email readers turn on the preview pane, so don't forget to include the subject line in the body of the email.

- Use the subject lines of the emails to make the readers curious. Many people are interested to know about new things so whenever there is a chance, share the interesting news of your site with them. You can create a sense of urgency like "Paul, offer exists for three days only". And on the subject line you use can state the benefits they will get from reading your email. Remember the subject plays a vital role in opening and reading an email and thus promoting your business.

If you need help writing a newsletter or email for your customers, Kristi Ambrose Marketing & Content Solutions can help you out with these! We can write one, two, three or however many you need. Email us for a price quote!