Email marketing

Special offers and prices

Clever, unique information. This can transform your message from a simple sales pitch to a resource which your customers will find genuinely useful

Reasons to come back to your website. Tease customers with hints about new information on your site, using the email to entice them back

Advice about new products and services. Use the opportunity to get your reader excited about new developments

Personality. The more your company has a personality which comes alive in its emails, the more chance you have of clients buying in to your offer

Tell your customers and prospects what valuable information or offers they'll get. It sounds ridiculously simple, but often businesses forget to set out their stall properly. You wouldn't sign up to a service without knowing what it entailed; newsletters are just the same.

Include links to prior newsletters. Consider putting links to old newsletters on your website so people can see what they'll be getting.

Give customers and prospects plenty of chances to join. Put invitations to join your email list all over your website. Make sure there is an invitation on the front page. When a customer has entered an email address for any other reason (e.g. placing an order), have a box allowing them to join your email newsletter with just one click.

Make it easy to join your list by limiting demographic questions. Each question you ask will reduce the number of people who sign up. It's a difficult trade-off because demographic information can help you target messages better. The ideal solution is to limit the number of questions you ask during the sign-up process, but follow up with questions in a later email once your readers are comfortable with the service. Many firms offer customers special rewards such as discounts for sharing their personal information. However, customising messages based on demographics requires a fairly sophisticated email list service, so you may want to keep the questions during the sign-up to a bare minimum to increase your list.

Sign people up offline. Have a place in your storefront or office where people can write their email address and join.

Welcome them with the most recent newsletter. Each time a new customer joins your list send a welcome email that includes the most recent newsletter. Most list management services can be set up to do this automatically.

Got a great newsletter? Read about getting people signed up to your mailing list.

Find out about blogging in your business.

Don't forget that offline marketing has its place too. Our How to... guides will show you how to create and mail a printed newsletter.