E-Marketing Strategy: E-mail Marketing: 
An Old Workhorse That Still Pulls Its Weight

When people think about Web marketing these days, they tend to focus on the potential of shiny, new platforms like Google+, Twitter, FourSquare and Tumblr. Too often, the old workhorse of e-mail marketing is passed up for the sexier tools of the moment. E-mail marketing has not yet gone the way of the modem. It can still be effective at driving sales—but it must be done correctly. So what are the best strategies for building an e-mail list, crafting an effective e-mail, determining when to send e-mails, and judging an e-mail's effectiveness?

Building an E-mail List

There are several ways to go about building a list of e-mail addresses—many of which are nefarious and should be strictly avoided. The absolute worst outcome of any e-mail marketing campaign is to be labeled—either officially by SpamCop, or unofficially in the minds of your target audience—as a spammer. Spam is only effective at collecting people in the village square with pitchforks and torches—not much else.

The best way to build an e-mail list is to sign up with an e-mail newsletter service such as Constant Contact, Bronto, or MailChimp. At Catalyst Webworks, we use, love, and recommend MailChimp—but the other services are stellar as well. Once you've signed up for an account, work your way through your account options to find the newsletter sign-up form code. Copy and paste the embed code into your site, and you'll instantly have an automated subscribe and unsubscribe box that enablees you to collect e-mail addresses.

Promote your new newsletter on your site, on your social media accounts, on your blog, in your e-mail signatures, and everywhere else—including in your print publications. A crafty use of a Quick Response (QR) code (En.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code) in print could make it easy for people to sign up for your newsletter while reading your books.