Last week I talked about Blogging and the 4 Corners of Web Marketing. This is part 1 of the series on email marketing and focuses on what to send out and how to build your list.

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways for you to get your brand in front of hungry customers. As we all know, the more times your brand hits your customer, the more likely they are to buy. When I talk about email marketing, I’m not referring to buying email lists and spamming your friends. Your email list is a very targeted customer that will sign up and wants to receive your message. There are plenty of creative ways to use email marketing to your advantage, but I’m going to list a few below that are actual business examples:

Home Builder - As a a home builder, my list would probably consist of people thinking about building or past clients. A newsletter on a monthly basis is perfect for this. Feature the new house you built on Stage Harbor in Chatham, talk about new building materials…maybe green materials, or put in a testimonial from a previous client.

Sandwich Shop - At 10:30 every morning, send out your specials of the day to your list. This is a time when I’m personally very hungry at work and thinking about what I want for lunch. If I’m sent out a quick email every other day, than I may just buy from your shop over your competitors.

Art Gallery - As an art gallery owner, I would do a newsletter that consists of new artists, events in the upcoming month, and also talk about some trends you are seeing on Cape Cod in the Arts. This could be sent out every other week, or monthly.

Swimsuit Shop - As an shop owner, I would put together a monthly newsletter tying in my e-commerce store. I would link to new styles that people can buy quickly online. A kind of e-catalog, but very cost effective. This could be sent out monthly or quarterly.

Ipod Accessories Manufacturer - As a product manufacturer, I would use email marketing as a press release tool. When I launched a new product, I would send out an email to my users and future users describing this product in full detail. I would link to either my online store, or my distributers sites to get sales rolling. This could be yearly, quarterly or whenever you launch your new product.

There are many ways to use email marketing to your advantage, if you would like me to take a look at your business and suggest a creative way to use it, feel free to contact me.

So how do I collect names?

I run all of my clients through my email system called Saltmail. Genevate in Falmouth runs their clients through GenevateMail™. Constant Contact is also a solution if you would like to set everything up yourself. On all of these options there is an email form you can add to your website that will collect email addresses automatically and dump them into predetermined lists. This is very important as these users want to get this email…its called Permission Based Email Marketing. Not only is it illegal to steal email addresses off the web, it is also annoying to future users of your product. We all know what it is like to get 25 Generic Viagra emails in one day, not fun. The list will take care of itself, from unsubscribes to bounced emails from users that do not exist anymore.

If you are not currently signed up with one of these systems above, please do as next week I will talk about crafting your first email newsletter. As always - If you ever have any questions on the article, feel free to contact me or post comments below.