Be sure to link articles back to your site. This is a BASIC but very important rule. Start your article and include a “read on” link that accurately describes what the article is linking back to. For instance if the article is announcing a sale, introduce the sale in the enewsletter, then say “Find more items on sale here.” This in itself serves several purposes: It cuts down on the "mile long" scrolling, never-ending email that no one will read. Giving them bite-sized lead-ins to articles will allow them to pick and choose what they want to read. Remember online readers tend to skim for...

Many small businesses use Microsoft Outlook or a similar email program when they start doing email marketing. The problem is that these applications were designed for one-to-one communications. They can work fine for sending email to a few dozen people. But using Outlook to help you send hundreds or thousands of emails to your customers is like using a speaker phone to deliver a speech in an auditorium. Email marketing can have a powerful impact on your business, and you need tools that are designed for the task. If you are serious enough about email marketing to pick up this book, you shou...

I often notice a good deal of my clients don’t understand the difference between “advertising” and “marketing.” Most of them just follow what others are doing by advertising their business in the same places as their competition, using outbound marketing - newspapers, TV, radio and magazines as means to find customers. What businesses really need to understand is that when you only advertise your business – rather than advertise and effectively market to them – you’re not connecting with your customer. Traditional outbound marketing techniques are losing their effectiveness as the intern...