Staying in touch with existing customers is the best way to make sure that they remain customers. And continually getting your message across to prospective customers will increase your chances of converting them into actual customers. Email marketing is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to communicate with a large number of customers and prospects at one time. Building and maintaining an accurate database of email recipients will help you reach your target audience to achieve your goals.

Here are some of the things you can do with a proprietary mailing list:

* Expand your marketing campaign: You can reach new customers in a more targeted manner with email marketing.
* Network: Your email recipients can forward your message on to their friends, those friends can forward it to others, and so on.
* Keep relationships current: Your current customers won’t feel like you’ve forgotten them because they receive correspondence from you.
* Increase repeat traffic to your web site: Additional emails will remind people about your site, and they’ll click through for a visit.
* Promote your brand in the marketplace: Email can keep your company’s image fresh in your customers’ minds.
* Generate sales and increase profits: You can include promotional and “buy” links in the email that your recipients can click on to make a purchase.

An effective email marketing campaign is a great way to build your business, and taking the time to develop the content of your emails will go a long way towards achieving your marketing goals. Building and writing emails that speak directly to customers is a great way to ensure that your email marketing efforts help you build relationships, sell more products and services, and drive traffic to your web site. Following these simple guidelines for how best to use each element of an email message will help you create emails that are opened, read, and responded to.

Use the Subject Line to Get Attention
The subject line is the first thing people read when scanning a list of received emails. The text in that field heavily influences their decision to open a message. Subject lines should:

• Always be included with your message — never send an email without a subject line.
• Be brief, featuring the most important words first.
• Entice users to open the email, and include a call to action. Focus on using benefit-oriented subject lines, and use words like “exclusive” and “limited-time” to motivate immediate action.
• Don't sound like ad copy — words such as “free” should not appear in subject lines. Avoid using all-caps since that is common among advertisers and spammers as well.