Using Email Marketing to Define Yourself as an Expert Part 3 of 5

For the past two weeks of the five part series about defining yourself as an expert with the Internet, we have looked at web sites and blogs. Both of these tools are great, and if a reader of these posts wants information from you and he or she is therefore more likely to be in a buying mood The goal of an email is a bit different because email is something that comes when you send it and the reader chooses when to read it not when to receive it.

The value of email is to remind and inspire your contacts. The emails remind them about your existence and your position as an expert. They inspire a potential client to read more, buy something or take another actionable step.

For example, many of you readers are here because you found out about this five part series from my newsletter. The goal of that newsletter was to get you to my blog. The next step is to get you interested enough to read the remaining part of the series and then for you to see me and the Denver DataMan team as being experts in defining us as an expert using the Internet.

• Email marketing can take several general forms:
• Promotions
• Reminders
• Newsletters

We will focus on newsletters. Newsletters are key way to define yourself as an expert because you give your reader something special and say your product or information is something s to share it. When a business coach shares information about time management, they are showing that they are an expert so that you are willing to pay to get them to help you apply a specific concept.

The newsletter can have seminar reminders and even a special but it is about providing information. Here are some tips to add value to the information.

• Write about current issues
• Write about topics that your clients and prospects commonly ask about
• Make your newsletter feel exclusive

Each of these items will make people want to read your content and then will see that you are an expert. Come back next week for information on using social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook to define yourself as an expert.

Constant Contact University

I am sitting at the Phoenix, Arizona airport waiting to head back to Denver after a fun day of learning more about Constant Contact, my favorite email marketing tool for small businesses. Today was a day to train the trainer and I picked up some ways to teach email markeitng and Internet marketing in general.

Here is one tip - check your sign-up emails and make sure they are still well branded. I checked mine and they were not - but now they are. Also make sure to collect where you connect and try and get people on your list whenever you can, speaking of which click here to join my mailing list.

I will be doing an introduction to email marketing in August and a hands on email marketing seminar in September using Constant Contact. See these and other upcoming seminars.

You can also sign up for a 60 day free trial and see what is all about.