The first step in email marketing is to build an email list. This takes some time, because you have to acquire new email addresses. You can do it by offering information that your users want whether the information is free reports, an opportunity to participate in a raffle prize, a chance to subscribe to a newsletter, etc. All they have to do is sign up at your site, including their email address. Before long, you have a good sized email list that continues to grow daily.

Email marketing is a great way to reach prospective clients, in part because it's so affordable. With emails, you are able to reach a bulk of people through one simple message. There are a number of email service provider companies, such as Silverpop, Constant Contact, and FastMail, make email campaigns easy to manage.

Email Service Providers have software in place that make marketing campaigns easy to use. Most of them have attractive templates you can use to make your messages more compelling to users. They also offer an ability to track the success of your marketing efforts. Simply enter your email list and you can send you email; the software returns information about how many emails were forwarded, how many were sent to bad addresses (bounced), how many users clicked on your website, etc.

While email marketing can be quite effective, it only works well when you have well-crafted emails. Here are some steps to make your emails the marketing tool you want for your company:

Emails must be direct, clear and concise. Readers spend just a few seconds looking at an email in the reading pane, if it doesn't grab their attention, it will be deleted.

Subject lines must be simple and clear. Your company name should either appear in the "From" line or in the subject line. Readers will not look at emails from someone they don't recognize.

The body of your email must be informative, and brief. If you are going to include any kind of graphic or logo, place it in the upper left hand corner of the message.

Add a link to your email that allows users to unsubscribe to your email. Give readers the option to be taken off of your email list. Most often, people will continue to be subscribed, but users want the option, whether they choose to exercise it or not.

Email marketing lets you reach literally thousands of prospective clients with little effort and practically no expense. It's a great way to stay in contact with your client base. The more contacts you make with clients, the more you establish trust in your company and develop your unique brand identity. Use emails to deliver newsletters that inform your clients, provide an additional service (like free reports, coupons, or notifications of specials). Email marketing allows you to easily enhance your services to clients and get more business all with the click of a mouse button.