You have your customers’ emails, right?  You can start collecting email addresses from prospects that don’t turn into customers, right?  Then you have enough email addresses to start an email marketing campaign.

Whatever your reason for not using email, forget about it and start.  There isn’t a good reason not to.  In fact, here are seven reasons email marketing rocks-

1.  Email is still the communication method of choice for businesspeople.

It just is.  It is for you too, right?  The reasons it works for you are the same reasons it works for everybody else.

2.  Email marketing is inexpensive.

No printing.  No postage.

3.  Email is immediate.

Ninety-plus percent of your response will happen within 48 hours.  You can send, assess results, make adjustments and send again in a matter of days.  Compare that learning cycle to direct mail.  Days instead of weeks.  Heaven for direct marketers.

4.  Email marketing builds relationships.

When you send something in the mail you have a real investment.  So you feel the need to ask for the order.  “Hello, I’m Hamilton, we just met, but here’s who I am, here’s what I’m selling, how many would you like?”  Sounds stupid, right?  Why would a mailing that does the same thing be anything but stupid?  Email isn’t expensive, so you’re more inclined to have a more natural relationship with people.  “Hello, I’m Hamilton, we just met, so I thought I’d share an article with you that helps you understand more about this topic we’re both interested in.”  Isn’t that relationship off to a better start?

5.  Email marketing is convenient.

Click to read.  Click to read more.  Access just about anywhere, anytime.  If getting your message, if beginning a relationship, if doing anything related to you is difficult, I’m not doing it.

6.  Email doesn’t kill trees.

No printing.  A nice reason to use email marketing.

7.  Email isn’t hard.

It might be hard based on how you have done it in the past, but it isn’t.  Use an email service that provides design templates for the email messages, manages your name list, sends the emails and tracks results.  I use myemma, MailChimp and Constant Contact for my clients.  MailChimp is free.

But wait, there’s more. . .

You sort of have wanted to use email marketing but you don’t use because starting small just doesn’t feel right.  You wouldn’t bother with a 65 piece direct mail campaign, why bother sending email to 65 people?  Old rules, new world.  For all the reasons above, you should bother sending email to 65 people.  Because as you add email addresses every week and every week, those 65 people will grow to 75, then 90 and eventually 300 or a 1,000.  And by the time you reach those types of number you will have communicated with most of those people 50 times.  That’s called having a relationship.  Compare having a relationship with, say, 300 people — contacting them 12 to 18 times over a year’s time — to mailing four times to 5,000 people during that same year.

Yeah, I know, email still rocks!

Related blog posts:

Boost Email Readership 3 Way

8 Lessons Learned from My First Million Emails

Every marketing consultant worth their salt are telling clients to communicate, communicate, communicate.  And email (email marketing) is still the preferred method by which people do that.

But (small problem) the trick is not sending email, but getting your email read.  Which primarily rests on the shoulders of your subject line and in the first few seconds people spend with your message.  More people will read your email on your next send if you do these three things.

Be Clear, Not Clever, on the Subject Line

Don’t assume people will open your email just because it came from you.   The subject line must convince them it has value as it competes with a few dozen other email messages in people’s inboxes.   So, be clear, not clever.

“Hear Music as You’ve Never Heard it Before” is clever.  “New Shure Travel Headphones” will get more people interested in travel headphones to read your email.

Clever: “How to Solve the Productivity Paradox.”  Clear: “New Time Management Training on CD.”  You get the idea.

Keep Your Subject Line Between 35-45 Characters

While shorter isn’t always better, most preview panes only show about 40-45 characters.  Less for laptops.  So, make sure your subject line doesn’t show “Special Discount: Take Up to an Additi. . .” when you wanted to say “Special Discount: Take Up to an Additional 25% Off!”

Write the Subject Line Last

This ties back to clarity.  If you write the subject line last, it will likely be the most accurate representation of what the message is all about.  And you’ve experienced this.  You sit down to write about a topic and in the process you gain some additional clarity about the issue.  Which shifts what you end up writing.  So, write the subject line last.  And give it its due.  Spend some time with it.

A good way to sharpen your subject line “chops” is to go to the deleted folder in your email program and look down at all the messages.  Notice the ones that get your attention and those that don’t.

Make Sure Your Message is Scannable

Okay, this is #4, but I wasn’t all that good at math.  People scan documents before they read them.  Email included.  If they see a big glob of text, that doesn’t exactly inspire digging into your message.  A mix of paragraph lengths, bullets, indents, bolds, etc., all add interest and readability (scannability) to your message.

Always be building your list.

Don’t bother trying to buy an email list like you buy a list for direct mail.  While a few good ones exist, the chances of you buying a bogus list far, far outweigh the chances of you finding a good one.

Good email lists are built, literally, one address, or a handful of addresses, at a time.  Start with your customers.  Use an Excel spreadsheet with just a handful of columns: first name; last name; email address; company name; type of product bought.  The reason: you’ll want to personalize your messages, or perhaps send only to those people who bought a specific product.

Start another list for prospects from the free downloads on your site, blog commenters, inquiries, trade show passers-by, vendors.

Collect email addresses as you would dollar bills on the ground: every time you stumble upon one, regardless of where or when, pick it up.  Sitting down to add addresses once a week or month assures you’ll miss at least 20% of them.  And by the way, do you know what a good email address costs to buy (if you can find the good ones)?  About a buck.

Use a service to send, manage and report.

Google “email marketing” and you’ll find a million to choose from.  An email service sends the email for you, manages lists you upload, provides design templates for your emails, handles opt outs and bounces and, most importantly, gives you reports on response.  Most start at around $15-20 per month, which allows you to send to a few thousand people.  The cost goes up as the number of people you send to increases.  We use and recommend myemma.com.  Using a service simply makes it easier on you.  Also, as you build your list into the thousands, some email providers may label you as a spammer.  Email services are known to the spam police.

Write the Subject Line last, and give it its due.

Don’t assume that because they are your customers people will automatically read what you send.  You have to earn their attention, and the subject line is where you do that.  Think newspaper article headline: punchy, but descriptive.  It’s fine to be excited about things, but leave the “Our Biggest Sale Ever” to the spammers.  Don’t exaggerate or over-promise.  You’re an adult.  Your customers are adults.  Act accordingly.

Send as often as you can create something you’d appreciate receiving yourself.

I get asked a lot how often can you send email without wearing out your welcome.  The headline to this section is really the best answer.  It’s about quality.  When you have something important or interesting to say, say it.  I try to avoid Mondays and Fridays for obvious reasons.  I receive emails from Seth Godin every day.  They’re terrific.  I receive emails from copyblogger.com maybe once a week.  They’re terrific.  As long as you worry more about keeping them terrific, how often you send will take care of itself.

Build value in your emails, don’t sell. . .or, more to the point, sell by building value.

The more value you deliver, the stronger the selling results.  I tell people to imagine being a paid coach of the people receiving your emails.  How can you best educate this group in bite-size pieces?  That’s your email campaign.  What questions are you getting from your customers lately?  Answer those.  What’s going on in their world you can help them understand, give advice around or link to an article about?  If you still aren’t sure about content, subscribe to some email updates by competitors and from companies you admire, regardless of industry.  It would be a great use of time to spend a month receiving emails before you start yours.

If you are having a sale, promote it.  If you’ve lowered a price, announce it.  If you have a new product, let people know.  But keep those types of emails to about 20-30% of the total.

Present the entire story in the email.

I get asked this a lot too: How long should my email be?  My answer: it should have a beginning, middle and end.  Most people think shorter is better.  Short is good, but not necessarily better than long.  On a good day, 12% of the people who you send to will click through to your website.  On a great day you might double that.  If you want more than 20% of your recipients (at best!) to get the whole story, and you do, don’t make them click to get it.

Include images.

People like pictures.  Very simply, more people will read your email with pictures than without.  The one I use here is by Ward Schumaker.  I also use istock.com, a great site that sells low-cost stock photos and illustrations.

Personalize your emails.

Dear Hamilton is better than Dear Friend.  All the email services allow you to do this, so do it.  With one client we also mention the customer’s salesperson in their emails, which doubled their click-through rate.

That’s it.  Until I get to #9, or until you leave a comment describing something you’ve learned.  Go ahead. . .I’ve love to know what you know.