There are many reasons to include e-mail as part of your marketing and customer service plans. The best chances of success with e-mail are to ensure you are delivering relevant, timely information to your customer at every stage of his involvement with your business. From soliciting new business to maintaining established relationships, e-mail can help you accomplish many important business objectives.

Build Awareness

This type of e-mail builds upon other forms of advertising for your product, in order to make sure your prospective customer maintains an ongoing awareness of that product. This type of e-mail message can be broadcast to supplement television, radio, or newspaper advertising. It does not solicit a reply from the customer, as it is only intended to relay or reinforce your message. Awareness ads are designed to make your customer believe he or she really needs your product or service.

Consideration Messages

These messages may offer something of value to the customer, such as information, a newsletter offer, or a sample of the product. It allows the customer to opt-in to your advertising, opening the door for you to send response-based messages.

Purchase or Conversion Messages

This type of message urges your customer to buy. It is a sales message, encouraging your customer to act. Be sure to send out a clear message stating the benefits of your product, solid reasons the customer should buy, and specific direction on how to complete the purchase. Word your e-mail in such a way that it is engaging to the customer and avoid using words like "free" that will boot the message directly to the spam file.

Usage Messages

Once you have converted your prospect into a paying customer, continue to build loyalty and a solid consumer relationship by following up. Ensure your customer is using the product they recently purchased, and reinforce the value of the product to your customer.

Loyalty Messages

These are perhaps the most important in maintaining ongoing customer relations. Ask the client for feedback on the product or to provide a testimonial. Ask your customer to share their positive experiences with friends. This is the stage where you become a concerned, caring merchant instead of just another blank face lost in cyberspace.

In today's world of e-commerce, you must provide added value to your client to ensure their ongoing loyalty and patronage. Otherwise, it is just too easy to find the same product cheaper, or easier to order, on any old website out there.

Etiquette

Finally, make sure your e-mail messages are appropriate in content and tone. Words alone cannot reflect the proper emotion, inflection, and body language that visual media or one-on-one contact provide. Be aware of words and phrases that can convey a potentially offensive message. Keep the form of your e-mail in line with a traditional business letter, using appropriate salutations and closings. Use your client's name instead of a generic, "Dear Ma'am" Refrain from using slang or acronyms, spell your message out in detail, and never, ever use profanity.

By keeping your target audience in mind, you can utilize e-mail throughout the entire cycle of client building and maintaining client relationships, to encourage the ongoing prosperity of your online business.