It’s great when visitors come along and buy your product or service, but even better when you have a way to stay connected and do business with them in the future. Email marketing provides that opportunity. Armed with your opt-in list, you can keep customers and prospects informed on new product launches, upcoming sales, company announcements or whatever it is you have to share. With the benefits of building trust and relationships in your grasp, it’s safe to say that staying in touch can pay off tenfold.

Maintaining Your Worthiness

Being able to communicate with your subscribers through email can be considered a privilege – perhaps even a fluke when considering all the spam and privacy issues going on. Email’s effectiveness as a marketing tool makes it an even greater luxury. Subscribers actually want you to stay in touch, but if you do not make every interaction count, you could lose them as time goes on. People are bombarded with email and some are looking for a reason to mark your message as spam just to have one less email to worry about.

Fortunately there are plenty of ways to keep in contact with your audience and maintain worthiness throughout the duration of the relationship. They all involve delivering value with each message you send. For your business, it could be the occasional offer of subscriber-only discounts, birthday incentives or holiday-themed campaigns to switch up the look and feel of your marketing. Every message doesn’t have to result in a conversion, but every message should convince the subscriber to remain on your list.

Where Consistency Comes into Play

The design and presentation of your email can play a key role in helping you build relationships with subscribers. For most marketers, it is an email template that forms this foundation. A good template will give you excellent mileage, lending itself to be used again and again. Use it right, and it will create the consistency and familiarity that makes it easy for subscribers to recognize your brand in and out of the inbox.

Promotional email templates are great for selling services and products, but don’t look at them as one dimensional features. The exact same template used to support your new product launch at the beginning of the year may be perfect for sharing news about your company’s non-profit green initiatives this spring. What is more important is having a template with the flexibility that keeps your message consistently easy to read, use and deliver.

Cherish What You Have

The never ending mission to convert new customers can get pretty expensive. In today’s economic climate, many businesses would be best served focusing on existing customers, and this is what makes email such a powerful tool. By staying in touch with your subscribers on a regular basis, you can have both customers and prospects thinking of you when they want to buy or recommend something to a friend. Value the list you have now and make every interaction worth it.