• Provide clients with information about the industry
• Promote your products and services
• Invite people to an event
• Send out a monthly newsletter

When planning your email marketing strategies, you need to answer these basic questions:

• What is the purpose of your communication and who do you send it to?
• How often should I send out a communication?

The purpose of you communication could include:

• Driving traffic to your website
• Get clients to purchase a product
• Get new “likes” for your Facebook fan page

Once you’ve defined your goal, you’ll know who you want to send your communication to.

The most challenging part of creating a newsletter is creating valuable content. You want your message to be education-focused. This will help build trust, loyalty and retention. Don’t just sell – provide value. The content should be interesting and relevant to your readers. Ask yourself, “How will this information benefit my readers?” 

Communicating more often is not necessarily better. It is more beneficial to send quality content in a quarterly newsletter than a monthly newsletter with so-so content.

If you’d really like to know what you readers want from you and how often they’d like to hear from you, ask them. Ask, “What topics would you like to see addressed in the newsletter? How often would you like to receive it? Weekly, monthly, quarterly?”

Take time to plan your email marketing so it’s most effective. Remember – it’s not how many people you send it to that measures your success. It’s how many people who actually read it and take an action such as:

• Click through to your website
• Call you for an appointment
• Buy a product or service
• Share your content via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Please share your most successful email planning tips. And get more great tips in our book and Action Guide.

My virtual assistant business Awesome Assistant received a 2009 Constant Contact All–Star Award for commitment to best practices in email marketing.

Constant Contact is affordable and easy to use, provides a wide variety of templates to choose from, and has great customer service. They are continually improving their product and adding new features. After attending a local free seminar hosted by Constant Contacts I became even more familiar with the product and how best to use it effectively in my marketing strategies.

They also have autoresponders, online survey features, event marketing, stock images, the ability to create several lists in your account and much more. If you’re looking for an affordable, easy to use newsletter service and email marketing tool, give it a free 60-day trial. Just click on “Try it Free for 60 Days” below and use my referral account. Once you become a paying customer, we both get a $30 credit – which is like you getting your first 2 months free!

As my client base grew to two, three and more, it was still fairly easy to immediately handle an incoming task. Not only were clients impressed by the quick turn around time, they now had the expectation that anytime they called or emailed, their task would get done – immediately.

Now, I do want each of my clients to feel special and important. They need to know that when they send me a task it will get done in a timely manner. But is it realistic that each task will always be done immediately? Of course not! The expectations I set at the beginning of my business were not realistic and did not allow for the growth to 20 plus clients. Time management now became an issue. Imagine if even six clients called or emailed within a fifteen-minute period and requested a task and they each needed it within the hour! What if I was already in the middle of handling an urgent task needed within the hour? It just is not feasible to think that each client could get their task handled immediately.

As my business has grown, I’ve adjusted my work flow procedures and my client’s expectations. They still expect a timely response and quick turn around. It’s just a more realistic expectation. Instead of having to learn this the hard way for yourselves, here are suggestions, based on my experience, for effective time management and setting realistic expectations.

1. Decide early on what your working hours will be and include the information in your contract. Recently my clients were informed that my working hours are 10-12 am and 1-4 pm (PST) Monday through Thursday and that Fridays are for administrative tasks. This allows me one day to handling billing and bookkeeping and prepare the plan for the following week. This helps me be more productive.

2. Create an email policy and inform your clients. I just instituted a new email policy as follows: Another step in effectively managing my time is to respond to emails at 10 am, 1 pm and 3:30 pm. Should your matter require more immediate attention, please call my cell (XXX) xxx-xxxx. Thank you for your understanding.

3. Make sure you clearly inform your clients of your turn around time. My clients know I will respond within 24 hours to their request, excluding weekends. My response will indicate when I expect their project or task to be completed. If for any reason it becomes necessary to extend the timeframe, let the client know as soon as possible.

I recently informed my clients of my new work flow procedures and timely responses to emails and other requests. Each has responded in a positive manner, understanding the need for managing time effectively and still promptly handling their projects.  Some of their responses are:  ”Love the new schedule!  Thanks for letting me know.” “I certainly will honor your new schedule and hours.”

What have you done to manage your time effectively and how do you set realistic expectations?

Some of the US Federal requirements when sending commercial emails are:

1. A real, clearly identified “From” address
2. A real, working “Reply To” address
3. Clearly defined content
4. A real, working unsubscribe link
5. A clearly identified address

Using an email campaign program such as Constant Contact can help you stay spam-compliant.

If you use a generic email such as name@yahoo.com, others may not view your business as stable. They may wonder if you’re just starting out and how long your business will be around. Also, some corporate spam filters block email addresses from hotmail.com or yahoo.com.

Your email address should look professional and be part of your overall branding and image. Just as there’s a tendency to be cautious with a company using a P.O. Box (you may wonder if the business is legitimate), there’s the same tendency to be cautious with a company using a generic email address.

Small businesses that have both a web presence and the same domain for their email have a professional edge on those who do not. But maybe you aren’t very computer savvy and aren’t sure how to do this. That’s okay. There are digital coaches who can help you and are very affordable.

Even some not-so-young are getting tired of the hundreds of spam emails received daily and are using other forms of communication. Some even view email as a last resort.

Email does have advantages, though. It can be ignored. It is an office mainstay. It can be easily saved, stored, and searched. It provides a record of communication that is considered as good as paper in business.

Whatever happened to communicating the old fashioned way? How much time do you save emailing your colleague in the next cubicle when you could just walk over and tell him or her in person? Are we losing the personal touch by texting instead of picking up the phone and making a short call? Is there value in sending a hand written letter instead of a lengthy, formal email?