I reckon the best thing to give you confidence to properly get into email marketing is to sign up for the newsletters of some of your competitors and see just how bad they are :)

Honestly, it's almost like someone created a Wikipedia entry for email marketing that says “Just send some promos for your events and services every now and then. Or tell them about awards you've won and new clients you've signed up”.

It really is that bad at times. You can do much, much better.

A few years ago a friend of mine signed up for a course on “advanced email marketing” from a well known UK marketing guru.

The course came on a set of DVDs (yep, it was a little while back – though not as long ago as you might think, most of the world had moved beyond DVD by then).

My friend's verdict: “awful”. It was apparently the same basic content recycled a dozen times for a dozen different types of emails.

“You can send an email to your existing customers…”

“You can send an email to your ex-customers…” 

“You can send an email to people who made enquiries…”

That's 3 of the modules right there.

But I honestly believe that awful though it was, the course made a lot of money for many of the people who bought it simply because it got them going and their competition was so weak.

Send useful information to your potential clients rather than straight up pitches or boring news and your emails will stand out.

Wrap them in a bit of a story or link to something interesting and people will enjoy reading them and keep coming back to them.

Add a call to action at the end to a related product, service or the opportunity to call you to get more useful info and you've got yourself a decent email marketing system.

Time to get started?