If you utilize e-mail well, you can keep your customers with you 3 times as long. What is the most personal way to contact someone on the internet? Email is the answer. By using email you can sell to your customers over and over again, by forging a trusting relationship and making a business opportunity based on your individual personality.

Google AdWords discussions are incomplete without a conversation about how to turn that costly millisecond click into a long lasting relationship. When an individual clicks on your AdWords ad, you pay 50 cents regardless of what happens afterward. If your potential client only looks at your page for a few seconds then leaves, chances are you won't see him again unless you pay again.

Fifty cents for five seconds of someone's attention-dang, that's $600 an hour! Kind of depressing if you look at it that way. On the other hand, if that person gives you her e-mail address, you can communicate with her on a regular basis for little or no cost. If you're trying to sell a $1,000 product, which is easier to get from your prospects: a $1,000 order or their e-mail address?

With a more complicated sales procedure, it is even more important to divide it into smaller steps.

The Power Of Your E-Mail Lies In Being Personal

Run-of-the-mill advertisers have little respect for the personal nature of e-mail. They don't realize how easy it is to turn off otherwise receptive prospects to their message, just by violating that.

You need to write to the person as one person. Unless the person you're writing to is part of a group where he or she personally knows each of the other members, then the last thing you want to do is write as though you're talking to a crowd. Talk to your customer, an individual.

1. A "From" Field that Shows You're a Real Person

If a personal approach works for the actual text of your e-mail messages, chances are that same principle will apply to other details in your e-mail. Such as your "from" field, for example. Consider the different impressions these "from" lines create:

Bill Kastl

William Kastl

William D. Kastl

Nakatomi Corporation

William D. Kastl, Nakatomi Corporation

Nakatomi Sales Department

Bill Kastl, Nakatomi Sales

Without the "spam" look you want to be amiable and personal. Spammers aim for this look themselves, the "this is from your long lost friend" look, so the truly personal look can be a difficult thing to achieve. The ticket is to include something in the email that is so connected to their peculiar interest that spammers could never have invented it.

Select a "from" field that will cement your customers to you.

2. A Provocative Subject Line

The most important thing about e-mail is that its success or failure is all about context. E-mail subject lines work not because they follow standard copywriting formulas but because they tap into what specific people are interested in at a particular time.

If we showed you generic examples of e-mail subject lines, it would be almost impossible for them to not sound like spam. So let's take examples from a specific context that you understand: Google AdWords

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The subject lines don't blare at the reader with cheap promotional verbiage, they are suggesting to the reader that there is a tale to be told. They intrigue them instead of repelling them.