So to maximize your potential, it is important to use key strategies to offer the best options to your customers. You should set yourself apart from the competition; continuously attract new customers and retain current clients.

What products and services do you offer to your clients or customers? It is so important that you offer the highest quality in whatever it is that you offer. If you cannot stand behind your products and services, it will be unlikely that you will attain your business objectives.

In order to develop your online marketing strategy, you will need to look at exactly what you have to offer and determine first what audience it will appeal to and second how you can reach that audience. It’s unlikely they will come to you without your developing a way to go to them first. You can easily find ways to target your potential clients by identifying them and then looking specifically at ways to utilize the internet to get the information about your products and services to them.

After you have determined what you have to offer to your potential clients and customers and looked at ways to use the internet to reach them, you next need to look at ways to differentiate yourself from your competition. If you and five other online stores all offer the exact same product and service, why should they choose to buy from you instead of one of the other businesses? What, exactly, can you offer to ensure that you are the most valuable choice that they can make? Whether it’s free shipping, enhanced support, superior reputation or any other factor, you need to identify these explicitly to your potential clients.

Finally, you need to continuously attract new customers as well as retaining your current clients in order to remain viable in your business objectives. Although some new clients will probably be reached through word of mouth promotion by your existing clients; you cannot count on this as your only means to build up your clientele.

You need to continuously find new ways to reach additional shares of the marketplace. You may also need to continuously update your products and services in order to continue to appeal to your past clients. If you sell a one-time-use kind of product, look for any products or services that may be related or may enhance your primary offering.

Central to great CRM is careful targeting, well-segmented mailing lists and customisation. And of course, what really counts is content. The type of content that an email requires really depends on its purpose.

Broadly, there are two different types of commercial emails which can be used to market a business, brand, product or service. First, promotional emails intend to illicit more immediate action though the promotion of a special offer or complementary product or service. Email Newsletters (sometimes also called “retention emails”) are the second type. These are based more on building long-term relationships with current and potential customers by providing useful or valuable information to subscribers.

As a side note, emails can also be used in CRM as part of a “transaction process”, such as notifying customers of when their orders have shipped, or to confirm order details and so forth.

What follows are 5 tips for creating great content for email newsletters.

1. Set a tone

Your readers should know what to expect from you in every edition. Is the newsletter going to be from someone in particular? Or is it a more general publication? Of course the tone of the newsletter should match the business’ or brand’s “voice”.

2. What’s the point?

Think carefully about who is going to be reading this newsletter and why. As yourself, what’s in it for them? Very often the best kinds of content to provide is something that’s educational or newsy, provides solutions to a common problem, is a “how-to” or offers decent opinion or analysis. Once again, this is will depend entirely on the nature of the sender’s business or brand. What’s important though is that you offer value to your readers.

3. You don’t have to tell the whole story

Emails should not be epic novels. Therefore don’t include whole, long articles in the body of your email newsletter. It’s a much better idea to rather use shorter “teasers” and link to the full articles on your site. This keeps your emails punchy and relevant.

4. Don’t use too many images

Steer clear of using too many images in email newsletters. Many email clients block images, or may catch image-heavy mailers in their spam filters. Also, bear in mind that many people may be reading their email on their cellphones – and images will not render well on these devises. Always ensure that the bulk of your copy is in plain text, and don’t use images for content headings if at all possible.

5. Scanning. Makes. Easy. Reading.

Like website content, newsletter content needs to be scanable so that readers can quickly see what’s important to them on the page. Engage readers with headings and subheadings that pique their interest and make use of bolding to highlight important words or phrases.