Email Marketing - Building Relationships to Create a Steady Income Stream (Author: Bradley J Spencer)

Relationship marketing - it's the latest buzz word in internet marketing. What's it all about, you ask? Simple - people prefer to purchase from those with whom they have built a relationship of trust, rather than just some Joe Nobody off of the internet. But how do you go about building that relationship with your customers? Once again, the answer is fairly
simple - a trusting relationship between marketer and customer is built through email marketing.

How It Works
Email marketing is simple, really. You capture your site visitors' email addresses and first names, and then you send them emails on a regular basis which contain top notch content revolving around your particular niche. In each of your emails, you build trust with your list by offering valuable tips, advice, and even reviews of products which you are
selling.

The key to email marketing is to not send out a sales pitch in every single email. If you are continuously trying to sell your list something - never offering them anything in return for free - you'll soon find your opt out rate increases, as consumers don't want to be bombarded with sales pitches every time they turn around. In order to build that trust, you have to
give them something in return for staying a part of your list.

Many marketers choose to send their lists free gifts from time to time, while others simply offer weekly (or daily) tips on how to solve problems within a particular niche. If you choose to offer tips and advice, make sure that you're not just rehashing information that's been spewed a thousand times over across the internet - instead offer your
subscribers a new perspective on old advice by spicing it up with new suggestions.

For example, let's say your chosen niche is something in the pet industry. Everyone knows that cats and dogs need to cared for and loved; so instead of spouting boring old advice on how to take care of Fido, why not offer a few zany tips on how to throw a birthday celebration for pets and kids to enjoy together. Obviously this is just one example, but the types of things like this you can offer your list are limited only by your own imagination.

Constant Contact Is The Key
Aside from building trust with your subscribers by offering quality content, it is important that you remain in their sites by emailing them with some frequency. I'm certainly not telling you to email your list every single day (though some marketers do); but you should at the very least attempt to maintain contact with them once or twice a week.

If done right, email marketing can be a very lucrative venture. In addition to building a relationship with your list that will have them scrambling every time you release a new product, you'll also be able to add other streams of income to your wallet by promoting offers as an affiliate to your list. If you have already built that relationship of trust, you'll
find your subscribers to be more apt to buy than ever before!