This article is for you, if you have a good size contact list and you’ve wondered how to create business opportunities. Or even if you are just thinking about starting email marketing as part of your business marketing action plan. Are you in between? Then, this article is for you are well.

Email is a wonderful business tool that, if used properly, will enhance your sales and marketing efforts significantly. Try these methods to get the most out of email communications:

1. Use permission lists only.
2. If you buy a list, make sure it is qualified – that is, those email addresses are valid and they belong to people who have opted in to receive emails on products and/or services like yours.
3. Ideally, build your own list.
4. Include an opt-in page on your web site, so people can sign up to receive email communications from you.
5. As an incentive, offer customers something free in exchange for signing up – a one time discount code, or a free ebook.
6. Make it easy to opt out or update an email address.
7. Only ask for the information you need – too many questions puts people off.
8. Adopt a formal policy about how the data will be used, and make sure each subscriber has to read those terms before opting in.
9. Honor those terms, no matter what.
10. Put a cap on the number of emails you send each subscriber – once a week is likely to be welcomed, but three times a week may cause people to opt out.
11. Set up your system to flag addresses after so many failed delivery attempts; this will make it easier to keep your email list clean and up to date.
12. Avoid attachments; many people won’t open them.
13. Go for something that will work in the body of an email.
14. Offer plain text as well as HTML to accommodate different loading speeds.
15. Set up a reply email, so your subscribers can reach you when they want to respond to the email.
16. Consider using a newsletter format for your email communications.
17. Subscribe to a few email newsletters, so you can see how others are using the medium.
18. Make notes on what type of newsletter formats seem to grab your attention.
19. Ask others for their opinion of which newsletters they like, and why.
20. Don’t send email communications when there is nothing new to say. Repetition will only cost you subscribers.
21. Make the content of the email interesting.
22. Avoid the appearance of being spam, by not using all capital letters in the title for the email, or announcing “Free” in the title line.
23. Do always make sure the subscriber’s name appears in the “To” field. It’s more personal.
24. Look into using email programs that automatically include the subscriber’s name in the body of the email.
25. Keep it short and sweet. Rambling emails, even if they are newsletters, are likely to be closed and deleted without being read.

P.S.: Contact us if you have been thinking about using email as one of your marketing tools but don’t know where to start. We work with many of the popular email marketing clients including:        1 Shopping Cart, Aweber, Constant Contact, iContact, Campaigner, and more. Check out some of the email/newsletter templates that we’ve designed for some of our clients. Keep an eye out for Part 2, 25 More Tips to Using Email Marketing Successfully.

So how do we make email work for us and not us working for email?

Here are my tips on the dos and don’ts of email.

* Have separate email accounts: one for business related work, a personal account for family, friends and acquaintances, and a third which is a miscellaneous account for which you can use for online subscriptions or where you have concerns about spam.

* Check your emails two or three times during the day to prevent being distracted from priority oriented tasks. If you are in the habit of checking your emails immediately after you login…STOP, this can throw your day off balance.

* Create specific folders for your emails to prevent your Inbox form overflowing. Have several act on folders: priority and non-priority, a reply folder, a miscellaneous folder and other folders specific to your work.

* Some emails should be responded to immediately after reading especially if it takes less than or up to 2 minutes to respond and then toss.

* When sending an email always have a good description in the subject line so the recipient can quickly decide on how to respond or categorize.

* When responding to an email, include and edit the sender’s email to include only important facts, this helps in streamlining the dialogue. This tip comes handy also when you decide to print a hard copy.

* As much as you can help it, avoid sending emails with attachments, as people are very concerned about viruses. Try including all information in the body of the message.

* If you are writing an email that is has a large content, write it in a document program like MS Word and then copy and paste into your email. Imagine losing an email that you have spent some time writing.

* When you are sending emails be very conscious about using Reply to All, cc and Bcc as you want to maintain healthy and integrity filled relationships with people. Do not carelessly send an email to the wrong person!

* The time to respond to an email that upsets you, is not immediately. Sometimes sleeping on it allows you to have a different perspective and the sting of the email is largely reduced.

* Have a concise signature with your name and contact details and remember to also include your website address as well.

* Remember, people first then business; so a kind and personal greeting goes a long way, for example writing in a email “have a great weekend” helps nurture relationships. As does speaking to clients and colleagues on the phone and meeting face to face.

How do we go about managing our time effectively and what is time management all about?

Time management involves working efficiently and achieving more whilst spending less time at tasks. Working smarter and not harder to increase productivity should be ones goal.

Below are my keys to effective time management:

1. Focus on results

Very little would be achieved when ones effort is placed on the tasks or activities that are least important. People find themselves in situations where they are so busy but are not getting positive outcomes or results.

2. Set goals (daily, weekly, monthly and yearly)

You cannot be effective without having a vision, setting goals let you know what you want and where you are going in life and also where to concentrate your effort. Even if you do get distracted, revisiting your goals will get you right back on track.

3. Stop procrastinating

Everyone procrastinates but if you find yourself in a position where your relationships, career and business suffer because you are putting important things off and they build up to where one begins to feel overwhelmed. Hope is not lost, you can start over today! Decide to have a positive attitude about the tasks that you fear the most as they are mostly the things that support our development and success both personal and professional.

4. Have a to-do list

A very sensible activity in dieting is to keep a food journal. You never know how much you are eating until you write down everything that passes through your mouth. Having a to-do list is your road map to personal time management. Being realistic is an important factor in effectively managing your to-do list. Are the tasks overly ambitious or is every task thrown into the list? You have to decide what and when a task is included in a to-do list.

5. Have action plans

A concise definition found in Best for Business:

“Action Plans are detailed lists which not only lay out the main things to do in order to carry out a specific task, but also explain in detail how to carry out each individual action. Use them to plan your tasks and inform the process.”

Having action plans for short and long-term projects supports the achievement of goals.

6. Delegate

How does a business owner know what and when to delegate? The “what” can seem fairly challenging except for when the cost of delegating a task is significantly lower compared to performing other tasks that are central to business growth. The “when” could be tasks that continue to be overlooked but are critical to achieving ones goals.

Effective time management is about identifying and focusing on the tasks and activities that will give you the most satisfying return. We don’t have to be overworked and stressed out.

Using the 80/20 rule

The Pareto Principle reminds us to focus on the 20 percent that matters. Of the things that we do during our day, only 20 percent really matter. Those 20 percent produce 80 percent of our results. Identify and focus on those things.