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When promoting your business, email can be a valuable tool to assist in building trust and creating added value for your customers. Creating a list of willing and qualified clients is the first and probably the most important step. An email that contains content which is well thought out and well written will inspire action on the part of the recipient such as visiting a website or passing it along to others in a viral format. However if your emails are not focused on the interests and desires of your target market and you don’t know which recipients are acting upon your email, then you are not capitalizing on the potential of your campaign.

An effective tactic in creating a successful list is to utilize your traffic. One way to do this is to allow the visitors on your site to elect to receive information from you by submitting their information through an “opt-in” field. Another way to capitalize on your traffic is by asking a customer to join your email list when they purchase something. Leverage your interaction with your visitors in order to identify those individuals who truly have interest in your product. Consistent yet moderate contact is important. If you contact your list too often, no matter how well-written your email is, you run the risk of pushing your customer away rather than pulling them in closer.

As soon as someone joins your email list, send a welcome message. Remember that you never have a second chance to make a first impression, so make the welcome message count. An effective approach is to thank the customer for joining the list, add a reminder of the benefits of joining the list and a link to your website. This is enough to make customers feel appreciated yet not so much that they already regret opting in. Find an email service provider that includes options for automatically sending a customized welcome message when anyone joins your list.

Send customers information that they are really interested in. To target customers with useful and relevant information, take the time to research want they want. One way to do this is to break your communications down into categories or interest groups. Allow customers to choose the categories that best fit their interests and needs and only send them information on those topics. If people know that the information they receive from you is always right on the money they are more likely to read it, trust it and act upon it. This common-sense notion has been confirmed in a recent DoubleClick study that found email users were more likely to respond to a business email (over 70% more likely) if that email was based on specified interests. Little details like this make your emails seem much more personal and get the best results possible for your efforts.

All email communications to your customers, including your welcoming usage, should reflect the look and feel of your company. This is just good marketing and helps ensure that your messages stand out among all the other emails your customers receive every day. Many services providers can create customized templates to match your website. Some providers include this in the cost of their services and others will charge a high price. Do some shopping around to find the best deal. This will ensure that your company?s image is consistent and recognizable.

Branding all of your email correspondence with the look and feel of your business is important. This will help your email messages stand out from all of the other emails that your audience receives on a daily basis. There are plenty of service providers out there that can create custom templates to match your website. Some of them will charge you for this service, others will roll it in to their service. Make sure to shop around to find the package that best fits your needs. Doing this will increase your branding with your customers.

When maximizing your efforts to build trust and add value to your customers with email, an element of success that is all too often disregarded is tracking your efforts. This is the part of your process that is most important in determining if your efforts to reflect the interests of your target market are truly effective. Most email providers have tools that will allow you to track and record your email campaigns. These tools are going enable you to determine such information as; who opened your email, which links elicited a click through, who clicked on these links and which emails bounced. This is the information that allows you to build your future communication strategies based on the actions of your list. For example, you will be able to provide follow up information to anybody who clicked on a particular link. You’re going to be confident in knowing which ideas worked with which recipients.