Email is a great way to market your online business, but you have to use it in the right way. If you send email arbitrarily to people who are not interested, then it will be blocked as spam and you will not get the kind of results that you want; it is much better to use email on an opt-in basis and apply it in ways that help people make better use of your business. Here are some tips on how to best use email.

Everyone is tired of getting spam, but people are actually interested in receiving email about things which they want to buy. If you have a product that people will be interested in, email marketing will not be seen as an annoyance but as an opportunity for people to find solutions to their needs.

Today, the entire process can be automated. Email scripts that are freely available on the internet today give you the ability to put together opt-in lists from people who have given you their email address on your web site ' people who have already given you the okay to send them information. Instead of buying lists of random email addresses, it is much better to have the people who are attracted to your site because they are interested in your products to give you their addresses for free.

Once you have people receiving your marketing emails, it is important in today's marketing world that you provide an opt-out option. It has to be possible for people who do not want to continue receiving your emails to prevent more emails from coming in. Most scripts today make this possible by including a link at the bottom of the email that the user can click on to be removed from the list.

Some scripts work by requiring the recipient to send a reply with a certain message in the body or header, but with a link in the marketing email itself you make things easier for the potential (or current) customer. Something to remember is that people have various reasons for opting out of receiving further emails. Maybe their account has become too cluttered and they only want to receive certain kinds of messages on it; by allowing people not to receive emails if they do not want to you demonstrate your respect for your customers and increase the probability that they will think positively of your business. You also prevent people from marking your marketing emails as spam and reporting you to the internet authorities, which can make it harder for you to continue with your online marketing by email.

Finally, you need to think about when and how often you should send an email. This partly depends on the kind of product that you are selling, but a good general rule of thumb is about once per month. A monthly reminder will help keep people aware of your business without annoying them to the point that they want to stop receiving info.

You should also have regular promotions in your emails ' do not just send emails to remind people that you exist. Have your promotional emails give people who have joined your mailing list some kind of special discount (a discount advertised for mailing list members on your web site is a good way to get people to sign up for your mailings in the first place). When people receive an email from you they will be more likely to click on it and see what kind of new deal you are offering this time.

Follow these rules for email marketing and you will get the best kind of response from your customers shopping on the World Wide Web