Email has become an efficient and low-cost method of marketing today. It is used by most companies because it is one of the most effective marketing tools. An email newsletter is a powerful tool for communication. It can be used for keeping the potential customer reminded of your existence, giving the customer detailed information of your product and informing the customer why exactly they would benefit by using your product. Email newsletters can also be used to tell the customers what is going on with the company and building a long-term relationship with the customer. With email newsletters, you are never out of sight, and hence never out of mind of customers.

For the marketing strategy to succeed, email newsletters must give the customer some value, in order not to be relegated to spam status. One of the surest way to get email newsletters is to offer the customer information on special offers on your product. This will entice those really interested in the product to subscribe to them and read them, in the process buying something. Another enticement is to offer the customer a gift voucher or discount for some purchase if they sign up for the newsletter. These strategies will get the newsletter noticed by the customer, and there will be subscriptions. But the interest thus created also needs to be sustained.

A newsletter must contain information that a potential customer will not be able to get otherwise. If it contains what is required by the customer, then they will read further. For this purpose, there should be several topics of interest covered in an email newsletter. The title must be interesting and appealing in order to catch the user\’s interest. A way to really ensure someone\’s interest is to customise newsletters. People will be more interested if they have information relevant to them, and they will be happy not to be obliged to read all kinds of material and sift through them in order to find things of interest. One way of tailoring newsletters is to ask the customers to check a list of topics they would be interested to receive information on.

Some strategies you might use to attract readers is to include some humour in your newsletters. Most subscribers would almost always read your newsletter if they know it is going to be entertaining. The content must also showcase your expertise in the relevant field, and must give confidence to the customer that you know what you are talking about. Simply boasting about your products or services is not enough. You need to offer them good value in the form of information that would help them understand the product more.

A rule of the thumb is to give at least 80 percent content and 20 percent advertisements to maintain the balance between value for customers and service providers. Another is to always leave a link to your website where they can get more information. An email newsletter by itself will not be able to convert a potential customer into a satisfied customer. The contact details provided in the newsletter will be the link towards this first step. Including an email address, and telephone number is also highly beneficial. However, ultimately, an email newsletter must provide information about the actual service, and the service must make good the promise.

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

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

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

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