5 Discover Your True Calling and Purpose: Unleash Your Potential

Introduction to Online Marketing Using Email Lists as a Marketing Tool

As a business entrepreneur there are numerous ways to increase your sales and better market yourself and your abilities. One of the most common, and most profitable, ways to increase your network is through online marketing. Online marketing is a must for anyone who owns their own business or has a product or an idea they're trying to sell, and one of the ways is to use Email lists as a marketing tool.

Twenty years ago online marketing wouldn't have gotten you very far, but now the internet is the quickest, and most productive, way to get your idea out there into the world.

One of the most useful methods of online marketing is email marketing. Email marketing does a number of helpful things for you. Email marketing:

− Allows you to reach many people at once

− Gives you an unlimited number of contacts

− Is more affordable than regular mail

− It's easy to update

These points are very important for today's marketing entrepreneur. Let's talk about the first point. Email marketing allows you to reach a number of people at once.

Allows You to Reach Many People at Once

When I say 'A numberof people' I don't just mean ten or twenty, I'm talking hundreds and thousands. You might have a hundred email addresses to work with and email marketing will let you get through to all of them.

It's not only that you can email many people; the great thing about email marketing is also that you can email many people at once and say the same thing to them. In other words, you don't have to re-write the email over and over.

One of the things I find about hand writing letters and advertisements is that although it is still a lot less informal, it is sloppy.

Hand writing all of your clients means you either a) Write hundreds of letter until your wrists are stiff and your fingers ache, or b) write one letter and photocopy it which doesn't look nearly as impressive as handwriting them.

Email correspondence saves you a lot of trouble because nobody expects a handwritten online letter. You don't have to worry about photocopies and buying stamps, all you have to do is write a brilliant advertisement or newsletter and send it through multiple emails. You can also copy and paste the letter if your email list is too large to send that many messages at once.

Gives You an Unlimited Number of Contacts

That brings me to my second point. Email lists can be unlimited. Yes, addresses in your personal organiser can be unlimited as well, but emails are so much easier to keep up with. You don't have to worry about losing your address book or one of your clients moving and you not having the new address.

With your email list you can almost guarantee their email address is going to be the same every time you make contact with them, no matter how far away they moved. Keeping your email list organised is also much easier than you think, in fact, most providers, such as Google, keep your contacts organised systematically.

An auto responder service such as AWeber.com or a service like RocketResponder.com, depending on your requirements,  would be the choice if you're looking for a complete email marketing solution - from getting your site visitors to subscribe for updates to easily sending out a newsletter to them. I'll discuss more on another occasion, but here’s the bonus with this form of contact marketing.

It Is More Affordable Than Regular Mail

Email is free. It really doesn't get any better than free, does it? When it comes to marketing, very little things can be considered affordable. After all, marketing is a competitive business to be in.

When you market yourself you have to keep up with everyone else in the same market as you, which means you need to be aware of:

− Current trends

− Your manner of speaking and writing

− Your appearance

− Your sell ability

− Your finances
 

Maximising Your Finances

Your finances are the first thing that should be on your mind as you step into the wonderful world of online marketing. Actually, your finances should be on your mind even marketing yourself offline and there are many ways to save yourself some money here and there.

One of the best ways, of course, is through email marketing. Let's look at the cost of postage for a moment. When you send a letter you are paying for the price of the paper, the envelope and the stamp. Those are just the outside costs. Mailing a letter through the post also means you're paying for your own time.

Writing one excellent sales letter can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour (We tend to rethink our sales letters, don't we?). Copying that letter hundreds of times will take even longer.

Now, let's add in the time it takes to hand write that letter instead of type it (you can double the minutes on that) and then add on some more wasted time when you have to search every contacts address and write those on the envelopes (which is a necessity).

Time consuming, isn't it? Emailing your clients takes away all of that extra wasted time and money you would have spent on sending those letter or advertisements through the post

"Oh Yes! I Just Found Out Something Important To Tell You"

In other words, you are not done mailing those letters yet. Whenever something about your product changes or (very importantly) goes on sale, you are going to have to notify your clients again. Now do you see what I mean?

That notification takes you back to square one of your mailings. Why would you want to go through all the trouble of having to mail out numerous new letters or advertisement when you could just email all those updates for free?

"One of the most important things you will ever need to know is that marketing and Email marketing is mostly made up of a bunch of average products or services spoken about interestingly."

You don't have to have the most interesting product in the world to market it, you just need the right target audience to make it sound like the most interesting product in the world, to the right target audience.

In conclusion

If you are a first time online marketer or a seasoned business entrepreneur, you absolutely must get your name out there. Remember this if nothing else, “Marketing is so easy that it is actually hard.”

What do I mean by this? Well marketing itself is quite easy, but keeping it up can become difficult, you have to be fairly constant. Keep your social media active and engaging, which for many can be time consuming; Facebook and Twitter profiles updated on at least an every other day basis.

Whatever you do Remember also that any kind of marketing is just that: marketing.