Connect to Customers With E-mail Marketing

PC World - Nobody likes spam. But nearly every business can cultivate customers and increase sales through the effective and judicious use of e-mail marketing. With a well-managed e-mail list, you can keep your customers informed about company news, new products, and promotions.

To help you manage e-mail marketing effectively, e-mail marketing services deliver help you organize your contacts, track readership, and evaluate their interest in what you're sending out. You'll build a newsletter template, import and manage the contact list, send messages, and audit results.

Many services can fill this role, and they all share many similarities. Here are a few good e-mail marketing services to check out.

If you want to try your prospects without paying, consider the free version of MailChimp to manage lists of 500 customers or fewer. You can send 3,000 total messages each month or, if you like the service, you can pay for the ability to send to more people.

JangoMail can connect to your contact databases directly from your mail server, streamlining the process by avoiding the exporting step to bring in new e-mail addresses. There's no JangoMail branding in your messages. Plus, you can initiate e-mail campaigns from your regular e-mail client; you'll send a message with a special subject line to JangoMail, and it'll be sent to the list of contacts you specify.

I like Emma in general, but especially for small businesses without the resources to design their own e-mail layout. Other sites offer templates and ways to upload a company logo, but Emma designers merge your assets--a logo, letterhead, URL, or other documents--into your e-mail design. That process a $249 setup fee, and you'll pay $30 per month or more, depending on the volume of e-mail sent. In this tutorial, I'll explain how to get started with Emma.

Import Your Contacts

Emma, like its competitors, imports your current database of contacts after you pinky-swear that those people are okay with receiving e-mail from you. The CAN-SPAM act says that people you e-mail need to have asked for messages, bought a good or service from you recently, or otherwise have a relationship with your business. More importantly, don't cross the line between sending occasional marketing messages and spamming; overdoing it can cause more harm than sending out nothing at all.

From your e-mail application, export a CSV file full of the contacts. For example with Outlook, choose File, Import and Export. Choose Export to a file and click Next. Choose Comma Separated Values (Windows), and click Next. Select Contacts, click Next, name the file, and click Next. Click Finish.

In Emma, choose Audience, Import, and click Create a new import. Click Manage Fields. Emma will normally just import contacts' names and e-mail addresses. In this area, you can set it up to import phone numbers, physical addresses, and other details to hone mailings later.