By Stanley Tang
If you are new to marketing online, then you have likely considered e-mail marketing as an option to get visitors to your website. Email marketing can be a very lucrative method, but unfortunately, it can also be very difficult to fine tune this method to work well.

The biggest problem with email marketing is the fact that it already has a negative reputation because of spam. So even if you conduct your e-mail marketing campaigns responsibly and above-board, it can be hard to get your readers to distinguish your e-mail from the scores of e-mails they delete every day. Another issue is that it is not as simple as typing out an advertisement for your products or services.

So what is the secret to success when it comes to e-mail marketing? Well, there are a number of things, that if done correctly and in unison, can make all the difference in your email marketing campaigns.

First, you need to determine whether you intend to reach your customers manually via your own mailing list, or through a service that already maintains a list. Your best bet may be to build your own list and then send mailings through it on your own. For one thing, it is going to cost you next to nothing to do it yourself. Additionally, you will have the advantage when it comes to targeted traffic, because you already know that those who have opted in to receive your mailings are interested in what you have to offer on your website.

Either way, probably the most important part of your e-mail will be the subject line, because if it fails to hook the reader into continuing to read the e-mail message itself, then your mailing as a whole becomes worthless. Make sure that the subject line is a one sentence condensation of what will be discussed in the body of the message. Tell the name of the website you are discussing, and the main point of your contact.

In the body of the e-mail, you need to remember that the reader is not going to want to sit there reading a long and drawn-out message. You will want to re-iterate who you are and what website you are writing about, and then go on to briefly describe whatever it is you want the reader to focus on. Keep in mind that what you are trying to do is get the reader to visit your website, so there is no need to go into great detail about things they could be finding on the website itself. Give them a reason to go to the website for more information.

Remember, never abuse your readers trust and confidence by sending out tons of e-mail. Commit to a certain amount of e-mails and stick to it. For example, if you state on your website that you will send a newsletter once a week, ONLY send one per week. If you state once per month, do not exceed more than one per month. Also, you need to make sure that your mailings are relevent and provide some point or purpose for your readers. If you can get them interested once, it will become easier to keep them interested as long as you stay on the topic that they wanted to hear about in the first place.

Use these simple guidelines to compose and maintain an email marketing campaign that will serve its purpose – to drive interested traffic to your website over and over again. You will need to tweak this method to suit your own personal needs, but once you get the hang of the basics, you should have no problem reaping the rewards.

Stanley Tang

P.S. Speaking of email marketing, I highly recommend you to check out Brian Edmondson’s amazing course where he unveils some *insider* secrets on email marketing:

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/15k