To grow your business using email marketing you should aim to have an email address for every customer that you work with.  You should also have a system to gather email addresses from prospects and most definately from website visitors. Work on growing your email list all the time and make it a priority!

Your database (list of prospects and clients) is very important. You want to keep in touch with these people and build a relationship over time so that they come to KNOW, LIKE and TRUST you enough to spend money with you!

Entice website visitors and prospects to leave their email address by offering a free gift, a discount or a newsletter - something that will be of value to them. This is one of the ways I build my own list; by offering my free report called Six Online Marketing Strategies for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs as a thank you for signing up for my Online Marketing Newsletter - check out the pitch at www.webchameleon.com.au.

Don’t be afraid of giving information away for free. Just remember that these days just about any information can be found on the internet for free, so in most cases all you are doing is ensuring that your target market gets the information from you and joins your list so that you can keep in touch with them over time.

Once a customer is on your mailing list, they’re a prospect (and hopefully a new customer) for life!

Some easy ways to build your list include:

• Ask at every opportunity - when on the phone or when meeting with a prospect ask if they would like to receive your email communications. I suggest you design a 1 sentence request that you practice and refine and use time and again when asking for email addresses. If you ask with hesitancy and without acknowledging what exactly they will be receiving its likely they will not supply their address.

• Capture Form on website - this is an essential factor for your website to include a sign up form to encourage visitors to your website to sign up for your newsletter or email offers. Again, make sure you include a good reason why and make it inviting and easy for them to sign up.

• At Networking events - I actually think it can often be easier to get new people that you meet to agree to receive your email communications than it can be to try to sell your product or services on first meeting.

• Send to Friend - ask your existing recipients to forward your emails to others that they feel may be interested.

There are in fact hundreds of ways you could grow your list, get creative but mostly just get into the rhythm of asking!