This guide shows how to get customers to agree to receive email from your business and how to ensure you reach the right people. It also covers how to monitor the effectiveness of email marketing and newsletters and the legal issues you need to be aware of.

1) Target the right people to send email marketing to.

Focus on your best prospects. Even though it costs very little to send an email, it still pays to be economical with your email marketing.

Email marketing is more successful if it focuses on people you know are interested in what you're offering. For example, if you're running a special offer on computer hardware, it will be more effective if you promote it only to people responsible for buying IT.

Unsolicited marketing emails, or spam, are illegal, but because they continue to be a major problem, computer security software can be used to block them. People are easily annoyed when they receive an email that's irrelevant to them. And they're likely to delete unsolicited messages from your business without reading them.

But an email to an existing customer or contact, who has agreed to receive marketing from you about products or services, will be valuable to them. Even if they don't buy from you immediately, they're more likely to do so in the future.

2) Keeping emails relevant.

If you've got a large database of customers and potential customers for your campaign, it's worth analysing what you know about them, so you can send a more relevant message. See our guide on how to manage your customer database.

For example, you could send high-spending customers an email about your new loyalty discount. Customers who haven't bought anything from you for six months will be more likely to respond to an update on your products and services.

Get people to opt in to your email marketing

It is illegal to send unsolicited email messages except in limited circumstances. If customers have consented to receiving information from you in the past, ie opted in, you can send them information on other things you think they might be interested in.

However, you must give these people the option to opt out of receiving any further messages from you. See the page in this guide on legal issues.

Junk email or spam irritates many people who dislike an inbox full of messages they didn't request. Sending email indiscriminately will create a bad impression of your business.

However, email can be a very effective marketing tool if you can get customers and potential customers to request updates from you by email. See the page in this guide on how to make your email newsletter engaging.

3) Using incentives in your email marketing.

People are more likely to opt in if you give them a useful incentive. For example, you can offer special services or discounts to customers who sign up for your email updates. It's even more effective when you make offers available exclusively through your email marketing. You can then be more confident that recipients will check for the latest email.

Building your email list

If you're running an email marketing campaign, keep it in mind when creating your other marketing material. It's well worth putting opt-in tickboxes for email information on all your paper-based marketing material.

You can use your website as a powerful way of getting opt-ins too - it's always worth highlighting the benefits of subscribing to your email service and providing an online form to register immediately.

Don't ask for too much information at the registration stage - lots of boxes to fill in will discourage people. Name, and phone number should be enough to start with.