What is Newsletter marketing? It is a form of opt-in e-mail marketing, where each recipient of the newsletter has consented to receive it, usually by adding their email address to a list.

Newsletter marketing is one of the best know and most used e-commerce tools. It costs almost nothing to send an email, and once set up requires almost no labor. The effectiveness of online newsletter campaigns can be easily measured and tracked to the real business value that every campaign delivers, and progressively optimised. Put that altogether and you have a fabulous marketing tool.

Indeed, life was perfect in newsletter marketing until the scourge of spamming came along.

SPAM/UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) is something that everyone, whether savvy online or not, has heard of. The word SPAM was coined during the second world war as a nickname for the questionable quality of the imported canned meat of the day. The term was used in a comedy during the United Kingdom's Monty python TV series in the 1970s when it became synonymous with boredom and repetition.

The cast of the series were seen on numerous occasions during the series wearing silly clothes and chanting the word repeatedly, until the scene faded and another sketch began. Much later, someone used the word in connection with unwanted emails, and the term has stuck ever since.

Spam is certainly hated by all email users, but the chief difference in email marketing is that it should be based on the permission of the recipient. Permission-based marketing is generally defined as the ability of a person to determine what they are included in or what they receive, and more importantly, their ability to opt-out at their own discretion.

Unrequested emails continue to plague of the Internet, and spamming is now illegal in many nations. As a defense, the software industry has created spam filters but they are make it hard now even to get solicited newsletter emails through.

To help get over this you can use an email newsletter service provider. They provide an email authentication service which is the first big step to preserving email as we know it today. They look after the spam filters for you as well as giving useful information about what you can do with your newsletters to get them through better.

Email marketing strives to reach as many people as possible with a great message, but an informal and not a terribly slick or packaged one. The essence of a good newsletter is really in the quality of the content and the ability related sales copy each one contains to sell, without alienating your readers.

In short - to make your newsletters earn you money, you have to show the people on your "list" why they can't do without whatever it is that you are selling.

Of course, before you can gain the opportunity to send your email out to people you have to create a list of subscribers who have consented to accept your mailings. The trick is to get people to subscribe when they are conducting their product research, and this has generated a whole army of so called "list building gurus". Each of them is selling an ebook, or a course with an intensity of sales copyrighting skills you will seldom find equaled anywhere!

However, they do have a point. With one third of Americans going online to search for product or service information, there is a huge market and big money to go for. They also know that no matter how well they train their prodigies, few will be able to match those first naturally talented self-made salesmen. They know from experience that an email marketing newsletter results in optimum performance only when it is done in an effective manner, and if the correct methodology is adopted.

Make no mistake, email marketing is a great advertising tool, but not when it is embedded with junk. Today there is too much junk mailing. It has made Newsletter Marketing increasingly unreliable. At times I find it painful to follow the campaigns of those marketers that seem to have missed the point and they must themselves find their lists evaporating as fast as they create them.

To avoid the many pitfalls is hard for most of us. So how do you write an effective email newsletter to a list of new targeted leads and existing customers?

The trick is to provide customers with genuinely up-to-date information regarding events, new products/service launches, important changes in their niche, changes in company websites which lead in that industry/niche, new names that have joined the industry, new trends in the business/product area etc. The aim of each email, in newsletter marketing is simply customer 'finding and binding'. Once you have found them you give them information of genuine value, establish you authority and expertise, and only then make a sales pitch once you have pre-sold yourself and your product.

The result, can be both very financially rewarding, and also personally satisfying!