Once you have an email marketing list you require to prepare your email sales message. We prefer HTML emails to basic text as they look prettier and can tie in with your websites look and feel. The days are gone where HTML email was routinely rejected – most people are now comfortable to accept it. The email should include a link to the website page that sells the product or service.

The message in your email marketing message has to be the right message for the target audience. So make sure you consider that carefully and that the email is succinct and informative. If the email is informative then it won’t automatically get added to their junk email list.

If you are considering an email marketing campaign then you’ll need to get a good email address list. You can build this yourself from business cards and online research or you can buy a bulk email list from online email address suppliers. You can buy 10,000 email addresses for around £1500 or so.

Quality can be an issue as some lists are unqualified. Ideally find a bulk email supplier who explains the source of the email information. This will give you the comfort you need to use the services of the bulk email company identified.

Some bulk email marketing solutions from email marketing companies do not provide the bulk email list to you. Instead they deliver the email campaign on your behalf. This means in theory that they can maintain the integrity of the overall system ensuring that their email contacts do not get over exposed to email campaigns. You may want to consider whethetr this is an approach you are happy with.

Other providers of email addresses includes directories such as Yell and Thomson Local - though the percentage of contacts in their lists that declare their email addresses can be low. 

At the bottom of your targeted marketing email make sure it says who sent it and how to unsubscribe. Ideally you should use a system that allows the un-subscribers to be removed automatically from your email list. This will reduce your admin overhead - good online email marketing solutions will do that for you and more. 

Some mass email software solutions just use the blind CC option – we don’t like this as it looks rather unprofessional. A proper email marketing software system will send the email marketing message to the individual. This allows the overall system to identify who visited the site when the link within the email is followed and it also lets them unsubscribe with no human intervention. The best email marketing solutions will show you the success rate of your email campaign - delivered, opened, unsubscribed.