The result? A powerful marketing system that will save you lots of time and enable you to spend more time promoting and advertising your business.

1. Know thy email program! ========================== Whilst all email programs exist for same reason - to send and receive email - and whilst most of them work in roughly similar ways, it still pays you to spend 30-45 minutes with your email program to get to nitty-gritty parts. The sort of parts that mastering will enable you to cut valuable minutes off your day dealing with your inbox.

Like how to set up an auto-reply, or a signature, or automatically save incoming and outgoing emails into different folders, like a well-organised filing cabinet.

Most email programs have very good 'Help' files - make use of them in your quest for more knowledge and more time.

Once you've got a good grip on your email program, move on to tip 2...

2. Automation is vital! ======================= You should aim to spend about 85-90% of your time promoting your business, NOT answering emails! If, like me, you get over a 100 emails a day, not automating your emails can be a real killer as far as your personal productivity goes.

Remember how in stage 1 I suggested that you get to grips with your email program and learn how to automatically save emails into folders? Well, this is a key strategy I use to save myself time.

Why should I waste precious time moving from subject to subject, looking at each incoming email in turn, when I can have my email program file my incoming emails automatically into subjects of my choosing. Subjects like each different project I'm working on, different clients, different business areas (marketing, sales, research, and so on).

With all of my incoming emails automatically placed into relevant folders, I can move from folder to folder, keeping my working memory focused on one area, with result that I become more productive than if my attention was having to be spread across multiple areas.

With many email programs you can even set up automatic replies (known as autoresponders) for each folder - so that when a new email gets 'dropped' into that folder a reply is automatically generated to sender, allowing you to acknowledge their email and promise them a response shortly. Without YOU having to lift a finger!

How efficient and marketing-smart is that?!

3. Set up your signature. NOW! ============================== It really is a fundamental online marketing principle and if you don't have a signature you are missing out on chance to advertise your product or service to literally thousands of people.

Thousands? Yes, because everyday emails get forwarded on to friends and business colleagues. Jokes, sad stories, news items, useful tips... all these types of emails and more get forwarded on to people you probably don't know.

If you don't have a signature set up, here's some examples. Note that they are a maximum of 8 lines long and each contain a compelling reason to DO something, like visit their website to grab a free report...

Example 1:

Professional transcriptionists can take standard or micro cassette tapes and produce a typed version of text in a format that’s clear, consistent and correct. They can create transcripts of taped meetings, training sessions, seminars and conventions, as well as dictated letters, reports and manuscripts. Once information is transcribed, you can easily email, fax or post it to a Website.

Accuracy Is Essential

Transcribing actually covers a variety of services. It can include whatever editing is necessary to make a report or letter “flow”. It can also include tweaking sentence syntax, adjusting paragraphs, removing redundancies, and repairing general grammatical errors.