Email marketing is a special type of communication that goes beyond your standard advertising procedures. You must respect the customer and speak in a style that is familiar to them when marketing via email. This one-on-one style of communication works best here; just as it did for the old mom and pop shop on the corner of the street. Gurus of email marketing prefer email to be personal, or else it may not work.

The CAN-SPAM act, enacted in 2003, set the definition of spam as "marketing messages sent without permission." The act set penalties for spammers and the businesses whose products or services were featured in these spam messages. Instead of spamming, email marketing adapted to the CAN-SPAM act by obtaining permission before sending emails to recipients.

Smart marketers, keen on retaining the customer loyalty they had worked so hard to build, addressed this problem of email marketing with best practices focused on permission. Although what is described as best practices, is often related to the size of the company or the type of industry you are in, however, the core of the best practices holds good for all. Here are some of the best practices tips to help you if you plan on giving email marketing a try:

1. Get permission

As one of the most powerful means of communication, email is a great way to advertise, as almost everybody uses email. In business-to-business marketing situations, email is accessible to almost anyone you want to reach. Other than being one of the most inexpensive means of communication, it can be built into most of the existing systems of marketing. However, for effective email marketing, what you need is explicit permission. This is one of the critical email marketing tips.

2. A Targeted Mailing List is necessary

Another of the email marketing tips is to have your biggest fans and most loyal customers ask their friends to subscribe to your newsletters. This is one of the best means of getting permission. It will result in a self-filtered database of prospects and who would most likely be interested in what you're offering through email marketing.

3. You need an organized and targeted database to work with

The third of helpful email marketing tips is to start your work with as clean a permission-based database as possible. You will need to make sure the database is targeted directly to your industry and to what you have to offer through your email marketing. You can look at your contact management database for your list. Other places that you can get such a list are with the established, traditional data merchants in your industry.

4. Be persistent

Customer relationships take time to build. Before the Internet came, a standard rule of thumb was 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad. However, it is far more difficult to make impressions now, and it may take 20 impacts to do it today. Therefore, as the fourth of email marketing tips, you should be in touch with your customer at least once a month.

5. What to do after your customer gives you permission

Say your customer has given you permission for sending her promotional emails; she has registered for future newsletters, downloaded your white papers (your solutions to specific problems), and entered your sweepstakes. You must use the fifth of the email marketing tips to continue to be in touch with your customer by telling a story in installments as opposed to all at once.