What exactly is email marketing? This is sending your marketing message to targeted customers as well as existing ones in the form of an email. Marketing collateral that can be suited for this idea may come in the form of an invitation, great industry information, newsletters, a direct mailer, a brochure, or even a discount coupon. This can be effective if done the right way but if you are not careful, you might just end up being another spam letter junked in the bulk items bin of your intended recipient.

Here are some useful ideas you may want to consider when preparing your email marketing campaign:

1. Identify the collateral which you will be sending through email – These days, various email programs have become stricter with delivering mails into their recipients’ inbox. You will be surprised that file size may often become a problem to consider. It’s good to have something sent which is roughly under 1MB so that aside from preventing it from being identified as spam mail, you can also be sure that it gets carried over the server without further ado.

2. Create a mailing list – You cannot just do an email marketing campaign with a random list of emails. Well, unless of course you actually know these people personally. It would be good to create an opt-in list first before you start with this so that the people on your list will know why they received certain emails from you in the first place and would not end up flagging you as a spammer and then blocking future emails from you. An opt-list is built the right way. It is usually protected with an agreement that those who are included in its directory express their approval on being sent different materials coming from you via email.

Mad Mimi and Aweber are two great options!

3. Prepare your auto-responder – The whole point of creating an email marketing campaign is mostly to increase your website traffic and your interaction with possible customers and existing clients. One of the most important things that your email marketing campaign should have is timely response and since you might not always be there to accomodate replies, having an auto-responder built in with the email marketing system is a great idea. This way, people would know how long they can expect a reply for you especially if they have other questions regarding what you just sent them.