I have preached many times in the past, that if you own an e-commerce website you must be using email marketing as a regular form of advertising. Not only does it bring in increased sales, but the monthly email you are sending to your existing customers constantly keeps your store and your products in the back of their minds. This simple customer communication is very important for customer retention and longevity.

One program which I constantly refer all my clients to use is called IContact. It is an online email marketing tool. I have been using IContact for a few years, and I can honestly say that is some of the best software out there for e-mail marketing. It works great and it is very simple to use. The monthly prices start from just $9.99.
If you are serious about email marketing, this software is a must. You can get a special free trial here.

If you have not already done so, I would recommend reading my “5 Important Aspects to a Successful Email Campaign” before you continue. It will give you a good understanding of the basics of email marketing.

Email marketing does not have to be hard. However you do have to put some thought into it. If you are just starting out, I would suggest sitting down and plan out a 3 month test email marketing campaign. Having a plan makes the visibly daunting task of email marketing simple and easy. Choose a topic for each month. For example, your first month, you might focus your campaign on a new product you just starting selling. Then, your second month you can offer your customers a 10% off coupon. And finally the third month, do a seasonal promotion – since Thanksgiving is coming up it might be a good time to wish your customers a Happy Thanksgiving and offer them some kind of 4 day only sale. These types of promotions are very effective.

Now that you have your plan, it is time to create and build your first email campaign using IContact. For demonstration purposes, I am going to use an actual email campaign I sent out for the launch of this website. I am going to assume you already have signed up with IContact, and you have an active account.

Each email campaign you send you can be broken down into 4 steps.

1. The List
2. The Message
3. Sending
4. Tracking

1. The List – Before we can send an e-mail message we must first upload a list of email addresses to I-Contact. This can be a simple Excel Spreadsheet with all the email addresses in one column.

In IContact click on the “My Contacts” tab at the top of the page. Then click on “Create a new list”