Email marketing is a very powerful way to get your message across to eager, targeted, responsive, potential customers.

Email marketing should be part of your overall Internet marketing campaign. Many people ignore the opportunities that await with a double opt-in subscriber list, because they mistakenly believe email marketing campaigns are spam. This is not true. Double opt-in subscribers are those that sign up on your site, then confirm their subscription from an email sent to the address they signed up with.

Ignoring the value of email marketing means your competitors have an edge over you. By failing to contact your visitors on a regular basis, you are missing multiple chances to offer your products and services to your visitors. Many people do not buy on the first exposure, so email marketing to them over time makes sense.

The very first step is to create a form to collect emails and select a service to manage your double opt-in subscriber list. Companies like GetResponse do an excellent job quite reasonably as a mass email service.

Next comes compiling your email distribution list. These are the email addresses of the people who have given you permission to send your advertising and promotional materials. Other than gathering them yourself, you can buy lists from distributors, but be very wary of doing this as you cannot guarantee that everyone on the list has agreed to be there. The second reason against purchasing or leasing a list is that you also have no idea how many of the people on the list have any interst in your products or services.

A small highly targeted list will beat a large random list for effectiveness.

Once you have a list of subscribers, you need to carefully vet your emails to ensure they will not be deemed as spam. Words such as free, sale, make money etc, will quite likely get your emails thrown into a spam folder, or completely fail to reach the recipient. If you are using a email marketing management company such as Get Response, then you will find you can test your emails for their likeliness to be captured as spam.

Ask current customers as well as interested potential customers to register on your website to get additional information. Offer everyone a freebie – a report, software or sample to entice them to sign up. Everyone who is on your mailing list has an interest in the kind of products and services you offer.

Now you can create a newsletter or ezine to send to your distribution list. They need to contain information that will be valuable to your audience, as well as offering special promotions, discounts and information about your products and services. Your job is to create a valuable resource for your readers while gently persuading them to consider purchasing paid products or services from you.

Remember to always include links to your website and any other websites or products that may be useful to your reader. If you are recommending others, you may want to consider a joint-venture or affiliate program with them so you can still make moeny.

Don’t forget to ask your readers to take action when they finish reading your newsletter.

Learn more about building a highly successful opt-in list for your email marketing campaign with Opt-In List Building. Read Opt-In List Building and learn how to build your list fast and you will greatly improve every email marketing campaign.