Tactic Five: Build Your Own Mailing List. One of most important parts of our strategy is to build your own opt-in list of customers and prospects. Over time, this list will become a serious source of revenue, and a vital strategic asset for your business. It costs little or nothing to mail to your own list, and sharing your knowledge through a newsletter will help you build a loyal following.

Tactic Six: Never Stop Testing. You should always be testing, making small changes to your ad, your offer, your website, maybe even price of your product, to find right combination. It's not uncommon to double or triple total conversion rate over course of a 3-month email marketing campaign. Little gains add up to big profits over time.

Tactic Seven: Offer A Well Targeted Bonus For Responses. It's often helpful to offer a free bonus in your e-zine ads, as an incentive to respond. Be mindful of what you're offering, though. After all, if you give away $10,000 anyone will respond. On other hand, an offer of free Palm Pilot software will only attract people who own Palm Pilots. Use your bonus to target people you want to respond.

While these seven tactics are a good starting point, it's impossible to reduce email marketing to a single 600-word article. A good starting point for more information is About.com guide, at http://email.about.com/cs/emailmarketing

I wish you success.

3. Create a contest and have people subscribe to your newsletter as a requirement for entry. Of course, you will give them a chance to unsubscribe after contest is over, but most will opt to keep receiving your messages.

Now let me get all gloomy and say a few words about purchasing lists of names. Lists of addresses you buy, even from best of sources, usually don't work very well. For some reason immense power of an email list doesn't kick in until people learn about you, THEN sign up to get your information. It doesn't work very well to send information to people who have never heard of you. You can send and send until you're blue in face and very few will ever buy anything.

OK, all sounds good. But where do you get information to send to your list? "Kevin, you're a WRITER. This stuff is easy for you. But I HATE to write!" I can hear you cry. And that's exactly why you should use my articles, or articles of any other writer who will let you (and most will if you also include their contact information at end of article).

Subscribe to lists that cover same kind of information you do. When you see a great article, email author and ask for permission to reprint it. You can also paraphrase information you find. Just put information in your own words.

List building is highly effective, but it's not a get-rich-quick method. It often takes a full year to get your list up to point where it starts getting results for you. It could take several years before it becomes a source of income that seriously changes your lifestyle. But in scope of things, that's a pretty quick way to achieve success you deserve.