It may be hard to believe, but email is still one of the best tools available for marketing your products and services. I wanted to briefly touch on a few things that I think are key to utilizing email for marketing.

0. Realize that email is not special, different, or unique. It is simply a medium, just like any other medium. The rules of direct mail apply just as much to email as they do to postal mail, display ads, or 24-hour recorded information lines.

1. Don’t sell. We live in a world where people are overly inundated by information. From your Crackberry to Facebook to email to Twitter to your 38 favorite TV shows to an overflowing inbox to….It’s enough to make your head explode. That means in order to be effective at email marketing, you have to cut through the clutter. The moment you start to hard sell, you get thrown into the clutter.

2. Build interaction and community. People do business with people they know, like, and trust. Not only that, but in our increasing wireless/disconnected world, more and more people are craving basic human interaction. In other words, be a person, not just a business. It’s very possible to build community and interaction online — look at just about every popular forum, blog, or Facebook group.

3. Use stories. People are interested by a good story. Thousands and thousands of years of human experience and history have been passed down through the use of stories. I’m sure it has something to do with how our brains are wired — humans just like good stories.

4. Ask the opinions of your readers. Take polls, do surveys, ask questions, invite comments. In other words, ENGAGE! This goes back to building community, in many ways. People want to feel that their opinion matters to somebody else, and this can be an important driver in building an online community.

5. New breakthroughs, trends, and technologies. Be on the cutting edge of new techniques in your industry, new content delivery methods, new developments. Has anybody ever come up to you and asked, “Hey, what’s old?” Of course not – people always ask and want to know what’s NEW in your life, your business, your experiences, your industry. MRI and CAT scans were super cool when they first came out, and I vividly recall people buzzing about the pretty pictures, but now they are a fairly commonplace medical technology. Talk about the latest trends in your industry, start discussions about new developments, and latch on to current events and fads in your communications.

I’ll admit to not being the best about implementing all these points, and more, even though I know them. If you use email to communicate with prospects and clients (and you should start if you don’t), then you might find Module 3 of Andrew Fox’s “Affiliate Millionaire” course to be a good starting point. The course isn’t actually out yet (I recently got a preview copy of it), but it’s pretty good, so check it out.

Make it a GREAT day!

Jassen Bowman