Every advantage has to be supported with product or service features. And one should use specific numbers instead of generalisations. A story with a hidden message can be placed in the email's content as well. It is also worth repeating the most important elements of the offer and add information about what a client can get for free.

The opinions of clients or of authorities on a given subject, examination results to raise the importance of arguments in favour of the offer can also be used. The author should explicitly write if they want the recipient to take action, but at the same time, ought to inform what the client can get in exchange for it. The best solution would be to offer something free of charge, for instance a bonus coupon or access to a report inaccessible for everyone else. Marketing specialists suggest putting postscript in the mailing, containing the offer's summary, alternative benefits or a bonus not advertised, which should convince the hesitant person. The principles of writing offers are also applied in writing persuasive emails, however, the message should contain one to two screens and be only a sort of introduction to the offer on the website. The language used in the email should be simple. The advertisement hidden in the email content has to go through the stages of AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), i.e. attract attention, raise interest to get more information about a product and boost the desire to have it, create or emphasise the clients' needs, and finally, convince to take action, for instance to make an order.

However, if the clients do not have confidence in our brand, they will not perform any action. Confidence is built up slowly and one cannot make recipients do something immediately. Emails should be written in such a way to gradually build the client's confidence in the company and its products. This can be achieved by placing in the email short information about the product, pictures, and references to the Internet website with a detailed description of the product or services.

According to Email Labs research, the more active references to the websites (with detailed information) in the email, the better. Each link has to be marked correctly and stand out from the text, e.g. Read more (use bold and underline). The text cannot be too long. It is advisable to prepare short paragraphs with references to the website, where the recipient could get more information.

Only after informing and building up this confidence the author can think about persuading the clients to perform an action, e.g. to buy the product, stressing all the time what benefits they have. Every email has to contain information about the sender's name, surname, email address and company's data including the sender's telephone number (4 to 8 lines). The summary of a Privacy Policy or at least the Internet reference to this should be placed in the page footer, separated from the message with, for example, a dotted line. Moreover, at the bottom of the message there should be information about why the email was sent to the recipient and how one can withdraw from subscription list in a simple way (usually by one click).

Contrary to appearances, the more difficult it is to resign, the bigger number of people actually do it. Methods for running mailing campaigns Having prepared mailing messages and a specified group of recipients, the mailing campaign can begin. If our company does not have its own teleaddress database, we can hire a company that will on our behalf send the mailing to people whose addresses it has in its base. And in this way, we can buy mailing to a given group of free email account users on popular portals. To buy email address databases in an auction or to gather them directly from Internet websites without the users consent is not a good solution.

If we do not know who a given email address belongs to, what their interests or preferences are, such an address will be of no use to us. What is more, by sending mailing to such addresses our company can lose more than it can gain. If we have our own email address database of our clients or potential clients, we will need a tool that allows to send personalised email to a big group of recipients. The program Outlook and the field BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) should not be used for professional correspondence. There shouldn't be any problem with choosing software for mass mailing. There are programs available on the market free of charge (under licence freeware or open source), which can be installed on our computers or systems made available in ASP model (Application Service Provider), to which we can gain access through the producer's Internet website.

The chosen solution in particular situations hinges on the size of address databases or on mailing features (mailing size, the number of mailing campaigns, etc.). The cost of purchasing a mass mailing program licence should not be higher than 200 USD. What is more, monthly subscription to access professional email marketing systems available in ASP model ought not to exceed 100 USD. However, those latter systems have much more possibilities in monitoring a mailing campaign's effectiveness. Conclusion According to the Direct Marketing Association, the number of marketing emails rises about 30% annually. This rise is due to low costs and growing effectiveness of this technique of promotion. As the latest data show, the percentage of replies to emails also increases and is now running at a level from 3 to 8 % and it can be higher with narrow client segmentation. According to the latest research by the company SARE, newsletters are gaining more and more popularity, which are now subscribed by 90% of those surveyed.

The way in which received messages are perceived has also improved, as 75% of subscribers express positive opinions about them. The preferred frequency of receiving newsletters has also changed. Today about 1/3 want to receive mailing even a few times a week, provided that it is concrete, readable and that there is a possibility to resign from it at any time (and in a simple way). The HTML format for newsletters is preferable for the majority of surveyed (80%), only IT department workers are in favour of text format. Research also shows that more than half of companies do not use electronic mail in promotion campaigns yet, but 65% of them are to take advantage of mailing, as today, they see benefits from applying email marketing. Companies acknowledge the possibility of having more contact with clients, the growing number of visits on their website and low communication costs via electronic mail.

Therefore, if your company has not created a newsletter on its website, it is the right time to do so. There are plenty of programs for so called mass mailing or email marketing on the software market, thanks to which it will be possible to gather email addresses of potential clients automatically and then to run a personalised mailing campaign. Good address databases (targeted adequately) allows you to build confidence among present and future clients and improve the company's image, therefore, increasing income. However, it is advisable to study the Personal Data Protection Act and Act on Electronically Supplied Services before starting to send mass correspondence.

Without being familiar with those acts, the sender can subconsciously become a spammer and will be placed on the list of spam sources (read RBL- Relay Block List), as a result, emails sent from your company will be deleted immediately by software fighting against spam and will not reach any recipients.

Copyright (c) 2008 Adam Nowak