For those customers who are a little more reluctant, another idea is to run a competition. For example, say you run a liquor store. You could run a monthly competition such as "Win a bottle of wine by entering your email address here". The prize doesn't need to be anything spectacular, and you'll find that you will get many email addresses that way.

One very important note, however, is that once you start regularly emailing your customers, you must always give them an opporuntity to unsubscribe or to tell you they don't want to be on your list any more. If you don't do this, you are "spamming" (unsolicited email where you can't get off the list). Spamming can get you banned by your ISP, and in many countries you can now be prosecuted.

Once you have your email list, you need to work out how to send the emails. This partly depends on how many emails you want to send. For small lists, your normal email program (eg Outlook) should be OK. But for larger lists, you may need to use a proper mailing list program or service. These programs or services also give you more options such as personalising the email and automatic unsubscription. Using a mailing program yourself will normally require some experience in HTML and CGI programming.

If you intend to send mass mailouts through your normal email program, you will need to check with your ISP about whether they have any limitations on the amount of emails you can send out.

Another very important note about using your normal email program to send out customer emails is this: When you are sending emails to more than one customer, make sure you put their email addresses in the blind copy carbon section of the email. That way, nobody can see who is on the list. People are pretty protective about their privacy, and may not be too happy if their details are openly emailed to hundreds of other people.

Once you're up and running, you can then use your email newsletter to inform people about what you're doing. But don't overdo it! You may lose all of your subscribers if you continually hound them with advertisements or sales pitches.

If you already have a paper newsletter, have you considered changing it to email format? You are able to save on printing, paper, postage, and more. And the newsletter gets delivered straight to where your customer will notice - to their Inbox.

If you are interested in getting an email marketing system, check out our email marketing software.

Contact us for more information on this topic.

Disclaimer: This page is designed to provide information only and is not a substitute for advice that is specific to your business. Before acting on any of the information above it is important you seek further advice from a professional who has taken into consideration the nature and circumstances of your business.

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