Paper cutouts

Email marketing in its simplest form is using email to get in front of/keep in touch with current or prospective clients or customers.

In its more advanced form, email marketing is a sophisticated method for creating a relationship with current or prospective clients or customers.

Here’s how this works:

You put the coding for an email opt-in box on your Web site in order to capture the names and email addresses of visitors to your site.

I use a service to collect the names for me in a database and then this service enables me to send out personalized email messages from this database. (The service I recommend is http://snipurl.com/cartaffiliate -- and this is our affiliate link. The autoresponder program which does this is $29/month.)

Without going into the technical details, the service is set up to alert the spam filters that these are legitimate emails I’m sending. Thus my emails get through spam filters easier than if I’d collected the names myself and then sent out my own email.

In the past it was enough to say “sign up for free to get my email updates.” Now that people are bombarded with so many promotional emails, they need to be “encouraged” to sign up at your site.

Some people recommend offering a free newsletter. This is not my preference because I inwardly groan about receiving another weekly email newsletter.

My preference is to give away a freebie that is connected to what your Web site is about. And the beauty of this is that you can change this offer whenever you want to.

In fact, my company has just changed to a new email opt-in freebie – the free report THE TOP 3 INTERNET MARKETING ELEMENTS. You can find this offer on every page of www.MillerMosaicLLC.com.

If you go to my company Web site and sign up, you will immediately get a message sent to your email address confirming that you indeed did sign up (this is called a double email opt-in system). If you click to confirm, you’ll automatically be taken to the free report.

Now I have permission to email you with special offers and more free information. If I do this strategically (rather than overwhelming you), I can continue to keep in touch with you and work on creating a relationship with you. (Each email message from me gives you the option to unsubscribe simply by clicking unsubscribe.)

For specific examples of promotional strategies you can employ with email marketing, read my article How to Use Emails to Keep Your Business, Book or Brand in Front of Your Target Markets.

© 2009 Miller Mosaic, LLC

For more information, read these articles:

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Losing out on social media marketing -- getting caught behind the eight ball

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