Sales newsletters are a great way to keep current clients and customers informed about your business. In a day and age where technology rules most business practices, many entrepreneurs are switching their marketing efforts from snail-mail to email. An email newsletter in advertising and marketing has the potential to reach more individuals at less overall expense.

The basic idea of using marketing newsletters is to provide current clients with information about upcoming events and sales within your business. It’s a basic promotional tool, providing specials only to those individuals that subscribe to the sales email newsletters. When considering the addition of the sales email newsletter to your marketing repertoire, note the following:

1. There are specific tips and guidelines you should follow in order to make sure recipients of your sales newsletter don’t send it to their spam box.

2. You can design your own newsletters using HTML code.

3. There are a number of companies that offer simple and effective services to help you get your marketing newsletter started.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Implement specific strategies to get the most out of your marketing email newsletter

Some basic principles that you should keep in mind when preparing the content of your email newsletter will help to insure that clients don't designate your email as spam. Be sure that the 'from' address is recognizable, such as 'newsletter@yourbusiness.com.' Also be sure to use clear and concise subject line. The content of the newsletter should be relevant to both your business and your clients' needs. Also, when a client subscribes to your email mailing list, provide a confirmation email so they can verify the subscription.

I recommend: Visit Entrepreneur.com for additional email newsletter tips and strategies for making sure your email makes it to the inbox. Ron Castle Webs provides information on why email newsletters are important and the steps he believes to be essential for producing them correctly.

Design your own email newsletters in sales and marketing

If you have experience with HTML coding, then you can design your own email marketing newsletters. While doing it yourself may take some extra time, you save money in the long run. It also makes it easier to make changes to the emails' format, structure and information on a regular basis because it eliminates the middle man.

I recommend: Sitepoint provides a thorough article detailing how to code your own email newsletter effectively. If you have the available resources to do so, you can purchase a 544 page guide, in PDF format, from the Neilsen Norman Group that contains 165 design guidelines for email newsletters.

Obtain assistance from an email newsletter in marketing service

Many business owners choose obtain an email marketing service to manage their email newsletters. While these companies obviously charge for their service, the time that you save by using one may be worth the extra cost. Many of these services provide templates to help those without HTML experience design their newsletter productively. They also provide a means for managing your newsletter subscriptions and contacts.

I recommend: Microsoft Office Live provides an email marketing service for an additional charge when you set up a website through their service. Obtain a 60 day free trial of the email newsletter service from Constant Contact and start designing your newsletter with one of their many professional looking templates. My Newsletter Builder provides answers to frequently asked questions about their service and the usefulness of email newsletters.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Email marketing is also useful in obtaining new clients by sending emails to all available inboxes. You can purchase a list of potential email addresses from sales leads companies such as infoUSA.com (see Other Links below).