When it comes to marketing your business online there are a number of channels you could use. It may be tempting to make use of Twitter and Facebook, however you will be surprised at how effective email marketing still is.

With all the attention seemingly around these highly popular social networking sites it may seem like an immediately obvious route through which to spread awareness of your business. The problem with this is that although these sites are popular, they don\’t lend themselves to a method of marketing which is particularly personal and it is difficult to encourage potential customers to buy. Although email may seem like an \’old fashioned\’ method of communication, the fact that you can promote your business to a highly targeted demographic of customers makes it an attractive option.

The backbone of any email marketing campaign is of course the mailing list. This is the database of contacts to whom you will be promoting your company and there are a number of ways you can go about acquiring additional emails. A good first point of contact may be your existing regular customers who may be interested in hearing about your latest offers and deals. If your company has a website (and you really have no excuse for not having one in this day and age) then make sure that there is a prominent call to action on the homepage which will encourage people to submit their email address. It will help if you offer some information as to why they should sign up to your mailing list.

An alternative method by which you can acquire email addresses is by buying them. There are companies which act as specialist email list brokers who can sell you the contacts for people who fit within a certain demographic. This may seem like a quick solution, however there is no guarantee that the contacts on these list will buy in to your promotional emails as the chances are that they will not have heard of your company previously. The best strategy is a long term one where you actively look to encourage people to sign up to your mailing list.

One of the main benefits of using email marketing is that you will be able to tailor your future campaigns based on the successes (or lack thereof) of previous campaigns. Email marketing software allows you to track how many customers your emails are being sent to, how many of those customers are actually opening them and how they are interacting with your content. This will provide you with invaluable information that you will be able to use to improve the way you promote your company. Not only that, but you will be able to further subdivide your existing mailing list into different demographics and target those customers specifically. For example, if there is a certain section of your recipients who you can see never seem to open your email then you may wish to target those customers with an email that offers them a substantial discount.

If you are somewhat cautious about managing an email campaign yourself then don\’t forget that there are a number of specialist email marketing management companies who will be able to take care of the task for you.

Trevor Richards write for Extravision (www.extravision.com), a leading UK email marketing managment company.

Trevor Richards write for Extravision (http://www.extravision.com), a leading UK email marketing company.

Author Bio: Trevor Richards write for Extravision (www.extravision.com), a leading UK email marketing managment company.

Category: Advice
Keywords: email marketing, email campaign, ecommerce, internet marketing, e-commerce, sales, business