Email can be an inexpensive and powerful tool to promote your business, help you build trust and create added value to your customers. The first and most important step in this process is creating a solid list of clients that want to hear from you regularly. The content of your emails is important, a well-written email will provide good information and inspire action such as visiting your website or forwarding your email to their friends and family. But if you do not customize your emails to target specific interests and have no idea which of your subscribers is really reading or forwarding your messages, you aren�t maximizing your potential.

One way to build a rock solid list is to capitalize on your current traffic. Create an �opt-in� process on your website so that those who visit you can choose to receive your information. When a customer purchases something ask him or her to join your email list. Utilize as many points of contact as possible to harness the people most interested in your product. Contact them regularly, but not obsessively. Too much email regardless of the awesome content will annoy rather than attract your customers.

Once people sign up, send a welcome message as soon as possible. This is your first impression and you want it to be a good one. Make this message simple�reminding them of the benefits of signing up and providing a link to your website. When you shop for an email service provider, find one that can automatically send a welcome message and preferable one that will allow you to customize it.

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.

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.

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.

Another element you want to look for when shopping for an email service provider is one that will allow you to add a "forward to a friend" option in your emails. You will find that there are even some packages out there that will allow you to track who on your list is actually forwarding your messages. This is the kind of valuable information that allows you to identify and track your most responsive customers. Providing special offers and deals to these "level 1" customers as a reward for their loyalty is a sound business idea. Shapre Partners published a statistic stating that almost 90% of internet users will share their internet content with others and 75% will forward this content to as many as 6 other people. This is a viral marketing phenomena that will bolster the dissemination of your product message in an organic and potent fashion.

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.