Email marketing is nothing new nowadays as companies are stepping up their gear in this marketing strategy to improve their sales and to expand their customer base. However, once we touch on the topic of email marketing, many people seem to have the wrong concept about it. Most email marketing strategies involve bulk email sending of information on various topics and also email to update customers on offers, sales, discounts and such. But more often then not, customers claim to be tricked into such ?spam? mail, when they actually do not realize that such email services are not really spam.

With the various amount of services provided through bulk email marketing, people treat it as spam and often delete before even reading it. How then do you prevent such things from happening? It is always good to first allow your customers to choose whether they want your email service or not and also provide a way out for them when they find it unsatisfactory.

Firstly, create your own autoresponders using download-able software like Aweber. Do have a catalogue of different topics that caters to different groups of people as we want to perform targeted bulk email marketing and not just bulk email marketing alone. The difference is target email marketing enforces on the fact that it is more personalized to what the customer really wants and it is not just a general email that you send to all your subscribers.

Next, you should also try to produce enough autoresponders that can last you for months or maybe even up to a year. The reason being is research has shown that people or consumers normally would not buy a product until they have been ?advertised? to for at least 7 times. Thus, instead of promoting your product face to face for 7 times, which would no doubt chase your customers away, you do it through emails; hidden behind the pretext of providing them information on stuff they want to know. While it may seem like a hidden agenda, it actually does not qualify as such because, at the end of the day, you still do provide the information that they are asking for and you do have a right to promote your own product to them through the same email as it is related to the information you have asked for!

Another thing to take note is to allow your customers to ?opt in? to your autoresponder program or emailing list. There are 2 types of ?opt ins?, firstly the single opt in and also the double opt in. The single opt in allows you to grow your email list at a faster rate albeit it being less ?clean? as people can churn out spam names for fun and false emails that may cause problems. Double opt in requires the customer to reconfirm that they want you to email them through a confirmation email that you send to them after the first opt in. This way, the process is thus filtered and the email list is thus more ?clean? with less spam and it also makes it more targeted, as each customer would ask for different specific topics.

Bulk email marketing is a great way to boost sales for a company, but do be wary of those spam mails that other companies put up. They may drag down the name of email marketing and thus cause your strategy to fail. Start off with your loyal customers and show them that your email listing is not spam mail, then through the good word spread by mouth of your customers, you can build up your reputation and ultimately build up your business.