With all the noise on the internet and in the news about email spam, many home business owners may think that email marketing is either dead or not a good tool for advertising. Well I believe that email is as important as your website and is still one of your best options for building a relationship with your list.

But there is still a right and a wrong way to email marketing. Some marketers use email as an afterthought. So their emails have no substance and are not sent on a regular basis.

I am not the first one to say that "the money's in the list". Every home business owner can build a list but if they don't manage the list then the list does not have any real value to the business. In other words you need to build a relationship with the people on your list.

This is even more important as internet marketers, since we do not have a brick and mortar spot to visit our customers face to face we need to keep in touch with them so they don't forget us and we can continually extend our value to them.

So how do we do that?

As a home based business owner it's your responsibility to keep in front of your list. You should be contacting your list a minimum of once per week.

Your email is no different than any sales or web copy you post elsewhere on the internet. The heading or subject line is the most important. It should be enticing enough to make them click on the link to open it.

Your emails should always be in a personal friendly tone. If you take a more "boardroom" approach you will always present a distance between you and your customer.

Not every email should be trying to sell them your product or service. A good mixture of information and selling is more settling to the receiver.

No email should be an out right sell. Mix the offers within the context of the email. The email should be about your industry and then simply mold your products sales pitch within the email. Do this with links to your site or blocks of sales data offset within the body.

Always, always insert a signature file. This holds true for anything on the internet, articles, ezines, solo ads and emails. This is your "business card" so tell them what you do and how you can help them.

This might sound like a lot of work to you, but you can minimize this task with an autoresponder system. There are many good ones on the market; the one I use is GetResponse, because of their reputation for email delivery. You write your emails once and you're done...forever.

While email can and does make a fine supporting actor, this is only one of many options open to the home business owner. When used properly it can be the star of your show and a primary sales tool for your business advertising.