It should not be a surprise that collecting email addresses and actually using them is very important in today’s marketplace. There are many ways to collect email addresses. If you are a business just starting to explore the idea of email marketing here are some ways you can quickly start collecting email addresses.

1. Ask: If you own a local business that generates any type of foot traffic when a person makes a purchase just ask for it. You can be nice and polite as them if they would like to give up their email address in order to receive specials in the future and be notified when any new products hit the store. If they don’t want to give it to you they will let you know. Many will not mind.

2. Email Form on Website: if you have a website you should have a clear location where someone can submit their information in order to be put on an email newsletter list. Some visitors will not hesitate to give you their email address. It should be conveniently placed on each page of your site so that they can submit their information easily.

3. Ask over Phone: If you own a service based business that requires spending a great deal of time on the phone speaking with prospects and clients ask each and every single person you communicate with for their permission to be placed on your company newsletter. Most will be more than happy to get more information from you, especially if they called you looking for information.

Email marketing is one of those things that doesn’t have directions. meaning that each email marketing campaign is going to work differently for other companies. Companies have different goals in mind with each campaign so if you have a competitor that sends out emails to their list of emails one way doesn’t mean that you have to do it that way also.

Your email marketing campaign doesn’t always have to be selling something or pushing a product. it really depends on what kind of business you have. I have seen some companies that have very strong customer loyalty that can virtually put anything into the email marketing campaign and it would be a success. Take a look at your email list and ask yourself do your customers enjoy everything about your company? Are you store that launches a new product and gets people camping out in front of your door 24 hours before so they are the first ones in the store? Or do you have a B2B business that could careless about your business and just wants information? Once you answer these questions you can figure out what kind of items you would like to include in your email marketing campaign. Some companies just want to brand their company in emails and some just constantly push a product for purchase. You have to be careful when trying to sell too much because you can quickly see your email list unsubscribing to your emails.

Are you a business small or large that has not started an email marketing campaign yet? Have you been contemplating whether it is right for your business or the right time? I will say no matter what your business is email marketing is a must but you should ask yourself if you want to grow your business or not. Growing an online business requires communication from as many different angles as possible. Email marketing is one important angle that should not be over looked.

It is no shocker that more and more customers are tightening up their budgets. This means that when they do spend it will only be with someone they feel very comfortable with and trust. If you collect email addresses as part of your business model you can stay in touch with these people through a simple email marketing campaign and build that trust. Even if you are not selling or offering anything the process of staying on people’s radars is important to any growing brand or business online. In today’s economy all businesses need to be aggressive in branding and communication. Email marketing is one of the oldest forms on online marketing and has gone through many transformations but there is a reason why it is still around, because it works. many different online marketing tools have come and gone over the years but email marketing has continued to grow in power. In today’s market place you have to be visible in every corner.

Are you a business that seems to have many spam complaints recently with your email campaigns? If you have noticed many spam complaints lately you have to ask yourself a few import questions.

1. Did you recently buy a list from a list broker?

From our experiences we have realized that purchasing a few hundred thousand emails and dropping them into your email marketing providers database and just firing off advertisements tends to piss people off. You might not offend everyone but you will get some people wondering why on earth they are getting your email when they never wanted it in the first place. This can quickly get some to roll across the spam button and hit submit.

2. is your content stale?

You might just find out that your recipients are getting sick of your material. If you have peddling the same stuff for many years people right now have less patience for anything so they might just not want your emails anymore. Try giving them a fresh new look or take your email marketing campaign in a whole new direction. Instead of selling try offering help to solve a problem or solutions to problems in that industry that people might find very useful.

3. are you always selling?

Sometime if you sell sell sell people just get a bad taste in their mouth. It might take them a few months to hit the spam button but eventually they will hit it. The hard sell is good but when the economy has hit rock bottom all that selling could very well back fire.

With the way our economy is shaping you can take trends and throw them out the window because patterns don’t really exist right now. Right now most businesses are just trying to figure out exactly how to adapt to what is occurring in the market and those that can figure it out will ride out the storm, those that don’t want to adjust will end up closing their doors. Now is a good time to do some basic house keeping to your entire email marketing campaign.

1. Design: Take a look at your design, if you haven’t changed the design in a few a years or 12 months it might be time to throw a new header onto your email or change the layout of it. It might just trigger some new inquiries from your email list. People don’t want to stare at the same thing every week. make sure your email campaign has the same branding as your company. I know email marketing 101 but you wouldn’t believe how many emails I get where the branding in the email doesn’t even come close to the corporate site or just doesn’t have any branding what so ever.

2. Clean your List: If you haven’t been cleaning your list you might be paying for your emails being sent to email addresses that don’t exist anymore. Cleaning out your dead email addresses will also tighten up your email statistic numbers, if you look at them.

3. Offer Something Fresh: If you have been offering nothing but the same information in your email campaigns for a great deal of time you might just be ready for something new in your email campaign. Change is good, embrace it.