Your emails are a potential source of income.

Yes, even if you don’t have a website or blog, and better still, using email signatures properly amounts to free advertising!

If you run a small business, you probably send a fair few emails each week; messages to suppliers, customers, prospects, associates and other businesses and organisations.

Your signature at the bottom of these emails is a great opportunity to send a message out to the people you deal with about what you do and why it might interest them.

Here’s what I mean…

Let’s imagine you run a small business selling hand-made wedding stationery. Your email signature probably looks something like this:

Best regards,

Jane Smith
Hand-Made Wedding Stationery

But it could be:

Best regards,

Jane Smith
Hand-Made Wedding Stationery

This month only - Buy One Get One Free on Our Entire Range - call now for our latest brochure.

Or:

Best regards,

Jane Smith
Hand-Made Wedding Stationery

Visit our website today for 50% off our entire range of products.

There are only one or two elements you need to consider when writing email signatures:

Your Promotional Message

The content and structure of your message is very important. There is a simple formula for writing these kind of messages that is easy to learn. To find out more about it read How to Write Headlines that Sell.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks can be a very powerful part of an email signature. They enable the reader to go straight to the information or offer concerned without having to spend additional time looking for it.

You can include just one, or several links in your signature.

They can be to your own web pages and blog articles, newspaper articles about your business, other websites, other peoples products and services via affiliate links, your social networking profiles on sites like Facebook – pretty much anything really. To find out more about affiliate links, read Affiliate Programmes Explained and to find out more about social networking, read Social Bookmarking and Social Networking in a Nutshell, The Social Media Marketing Book and Inbound Links: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Once you’ve written your promotional message and added any hyperlinks, just look for “Signature” in the menu of your email software. In Microsoft Outlook 2007 for example, you just open a new message then choose Insert and Signature. Virtually all email software has a signature function – if you’re not sure where it is on yours, just click on help and type “signature”.

Now, every time you send an email or reply to one, your signature is added, either automatically or with a click or two. Just remember to update your signature regularly to stop it getting boring and being ignored.

• Why Online Publishing Can Make You Wealthy With Little Risk - Part I
• Internet Network Marketing in A Bad Economy Part 2
• Another 7 Steps for How to Get Traffic to Your Blog
• Five Reasons to Market Your Business on Twitter
• How Can Anyone Make Great Money Part Time From Home?

To reach 10687 people, just hit send!

Email marketing is a great way to reach large numbers of existing and potential customers easily and at very low cost.

Unlike traditional direct mail, there are no production costs for the mail shots themselves, no envelopes to buy, no tedious envelope stuffing and no postage costs.

Next, consider that delivery is virtually instant, response data is automatic, statistical analysis is simple and most of your list maintenance is done by the subscribers themselves and you’ll soon realise that email marketing is a brilliant tool for small business.

So here’s how to set up your own email marketing system.

You’ll need:

1. A reason why people should subscribe to your list.
2. A method for collecting and storing email addresses.
3. A tool for writing your emails.
4. A system for delivering those emails.
5. A tracking tool to collect data about how many were opened, read, acted upon, etc.
6. To make sure that your email campaigns are ethical and legal.

Why People Should Subscribe to Your Mailing List

There are so many email newsletters out there now that you really need a good reason for people to subscribe to yours. Anyone who has spent any time on the internet at all knows that it’s easy to subscribe to a few email newsletters and before you know it, have an inbox full of junk. For that reason it’s not enough to just ask people to subscribe; you need to give them a really compelling reason to subscribe. The way to do this is to offer them something free, just for subscribing. Something they can download instantly is best – perhaps an eBook or an MP3 file, but be careful. Whatever your freebie is it needs to be of great value to your subscriber. It’s no good offering them some lame 4 page eBook that is really designed to get them to sign up for your expensive online course. The freebie needs to be of great value to them in itself. The best way to do this is to make sure that it is packed full of really useful information, tips, tricks and time saving advice. Yes, some of it could be about other goods and services that you offer, but most of it should be genuinely useful, free advice. As a general rule I would say it needs to be at least 20 pages.

Simplicity

Items 2 to 5 are simple. They are all provided within one system – an email marketing system. A good email marketing systems will collect and store email addresses, automatically deliver your free download, provide you with a tool for writing and delivering email campaigns and a system for collecting and anaylsing data after delivery.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of email marketing systems available, some good, some not so good, and some terrible. I have personally tried about 20 of them. Here are the best ones I have found to date.

Email Plug-Ins for WordPress Users

• Newsletter (WordPress Plug-In) – This is brilliant! The main system is totally free. There is a small charge for the upgrade which include statistics.
• G-Lock EasyMail (WordPress Plug-In) – Buy once and it’s yours to use without further costs.

Email Marketing for Everyone

• AWeber – Monthly subscriptions, externally hosted, very comprehensive system, set up multiple lists.
• GetResponse – similar to AWeber above.

Once you’ve chosen your email marketing system, set it up and put a subscription form on your site. Offer a free and valuable giveaway to subscribers and start collecting email addresses.

Next, write your promotional emails. Include special offers, discounts, promotions, latest news, tips, tricks, trade secrets and anything else that will make reading your emails worthwhile to subscribers.

How often should you send out newsletters? Think about your own experiences. Would you want to get a newsletter every day, week or month? My personal view is that quality beats quantity every time, but decide for yourself.

Finally, remember to check the statistical data regularly – it will help you to fine tune your future email campaigns.

Double Opt-In and SPAM

Like me, you are probably tired of getting unsolicited emails every day, i.e. SPAM. The latest one I got was from what appears to be a respectable business who looked my website up on a directory, then filled in my contact form with details of their latest offer. SPAM laws vary from country to country, but because you cannot know where your subscribers come from, you should always work to the strictest interpretations of what constitutes SPAM. Always remember, you cannot annoy someone into buying anything! To avoid annoying people, getting blacklisted and possibly even prosecuted, use a double opt-in mailing system like those above. For more information read wikipedia’s definition of SPAM.

• How To Make Money Online The Right Way
• 8 Key Ways to Advance your Corporate Blogging Effort
• Email Marketing's Role In Internet Marketing
• Finovate Startup 2009 Live Twitter
• Email Marketing's Role In Internet Marketing

Do you find that whenever you open your inbox there are 476 junk e-mails, 94 SPAM e-mails and 20 really important ones buried in there somewhere amongst all the inbox junk?

These 4 top tips will help you drastically reduce the amount of junk e-mails and SPAM you receive. This will save you having to waste your valuable time dealing with them and allow you to get on with something important instead.

1. Use a contact form

If you have a website or blog, don’t put your e-mail address on it anywhere. Spam bots regularly crawl websites and harvest e-mail the addresses they find there. These are then added to their mailing list automatically: hey presto… bucket loads of SPAM!

Instead, use something like this Contact Form, not an e-mail address on your website or blog.

2. Don’t make your e-mail address public

For the same reason as described above, don’t put your e-mail address in public places on the Internet.

These include:

• Online directories e.g. Yell.com
• Blog comments
• Online forums
• social networking sites

3. Use a dedicated e-mail address for subscriptions

Whenever you subscribe to newsletters, mailing lists and websites in general, always use an e-mail address that you ONLY use for subscribing e.g. signup@yourdomain.com or signupyourname@hotmail.com.

This way, all signup related e-mails will go to a separate inbox. If for some reason you still want them to go to your main inbox just set up e-mail forwarding in your e-mail software. Then it will just be a case of checking the “To” field to identify and separate them.

4. What if you’ve already got a junk e-mail/SPAM problem?

Change your e-mail address and tell anyone who needs to know including any subscriptions you want to maintain – simple.

• Profit Making Web Marketing Via Blogs
• Web Design and Blogs: How Important Is a Fresh Look?
• Professional Blogging Roundup: Winter Begins
• Texas Web Designers Illustrate The Differences Between SEM And SEO
• Web Design Toronto