Email marketing is one of the most profitable strategies available to the online entrepreneur (and offline business owners, too).

Consider this: About 99% of your website visitors will leave without buying anything from you on their first visit. But by creating a great opt-in offer you can at least get their contact details — and then use email marketing to follow up, build relationships, and turn them into paying customers.

And email marketing is by far the BEST and CHEAPEST way to stay in touch with your customers and build rock-solid relationships with them — so they’ll buy from you again and again! (This is called the “lifetime value” of your customers, and it’s extremely profitable.)

Email marketing just plain works! Just take a look at these statistics from PostFuture:

There are now more than 1 BILLION Internet users worldwide — and 90% of them use email. 70% of users receive opt-in email from online businesses. 82% of online buyers have made at least one purchase in response to an email promotion. 32% have made an immediate online purchase in response to an email.

With numbers like these, you can understand why I’m always stunned to hear about a business that STILL hasn’t started to take advantage of email marketing strategies.

If you’re stuck for ideas on how to use email marketing to ramp up your profits? Here are 10 proven email marketing strategies to get you started…

Email marketing strategy #1: Develop relationships and establish credibility by offering free information

Sending your subscribers valuable, free information — such as an authoritative eBook — will help them get to know and trust you. Once you’ve established your credibility, you dramatically increase your chances of converting subscribers into lifelong customers.

You can offer anything from a free report to a free trial version of software… whatever you think your subscribers would like!

Email marketing strategy 2: Encourage repeat visits by announcing regular specials

Once you’ve started collecting email addresses, you can send your customers and subscribers regular updates letting them know what your specials are. Sending regular discount offers is a great way to get your customers familiar with you and your site — and turn them into regulars who will buy from you again and again.

Email marketing strategy 3: Host “Customer Only” events

Suppose you own a restaurant, and you’ve been collecting your customers’ email addresses. You could send each of them an email invitation to an exclusive wine-tasting evening for regular diners only. Rewards like this are one of the best ways to capitalize on the lifetime value of your customers.

If you own an online business, you can set up a special page on your site that is accessible only to customers — and then send them an email telling them how to take advantage of the specials you advertise on that page.

Email marketing strategy 4: Include promotions in appointment reminders

If you are running a service business, as opposed to a retail business, you can still capitalize on the power of email marketing by sending appointment reminders to your clients.

If you’re a karate teacher, for example, you could send your new clients an email three days before their first lesson, reminding them where you are located and when they need to arrive. In that same message, you could include a coupon that offers them 25% off their lessons if they bring a friend to enroll as well!

Email marketing strategy 5: Follow up with your hottest leads

You can use email to follow up with people you have spoken with personally, but who have not made a purchase. Offer to answer any additional questions they may have, and let them know that you are available to speak with them at their convenience. This can dramatically increase your chances of closing a sale by providing your leads with extra information they’re not expecting.

Email marketing strategy 6: Offer electronic “loyalty coupons”

This is a great way to get your existing customers to buy from you again and again. Simply send each of your customers a coupon that they can print and bring with them into your store or use on your website. It is always a good idea to make your coupons valid for a limited time only to motivate your customers to make a purchase from you as soon as possible.

Email marketing strategy 7: Send follow-up offers to your customers

Follow-up offers are one of the most powerful ways to build a profitable business. because they build on the trust you’ve established to close the initial sale — and turn first-time buyers into regular customers.

How profitable can follow-up email be? My team once sent our customers a follow-up email introducing them to a product that we thought they might like. The entire process of writing the email and sending it out took about 20 minutes — and the result was a direct profit of $74,000!

Email marketing strategy 8: Encourage “Send to a Friend” referrals

Email is a great way to encourage referrals because it’s easy for people to forward messages to their families, friends, and coworkers. Make sure every newsletter, offer, or eBook you send to your subscribers reminds them that they can forward your message to anyone they think might be interested.

You could even run a promotion that gives your existing customers something for free every time they personally refer a new customer to you.

Email marketing strategy 9: Deliver your product electronically

Suppose you’ve written a book and you’re currently selling paperback copies through your site for $29 each. By creating a digital version of your book — which is WAY easier than you’re probably thinking — you can simply email it to your customers.

And since you won’t have to worry about things like printing costs, warehousing, packaging, and delivery, you can DRAMATICALLY increase your profit margin!

Email marketing strategy 10: Use email to sell your knowledge and create recurring revenue

If you are an expert on a particular topic — and just about everyone is — then you’ve got a successful business based on a paid-subscription newsletter waiting to be born.

Of course there are tons of other email marketing strategies you can put to use. And once you realize just how easy it is to use it to drive sales, you’ll be thinking of all kinds of new strategies yourself!

Email is an important marketing tool. Regardless of whether you are sending out a single email or a newsletter or broadcast to stay in contact with potential or existing customers, it will be a waste of time if the recipients do not open your email. Follow these tips to make your email communications user friendly and compel recipients to read them.

Here are two suggestions to get people to open your email.

1. Write subject lines that indicates the content of your message. Many receivers may delete your email without reading it if your subject line is not compelling or does not indicate the content.
2. Keep the subject line brief. Many email programs cut off long subject lines.

Below are eight useful tips to make your email message user friendly.

1. Include your name at the end of your message. People often don’t remember email addresses and may not know who sent the email. Also, including your name personalizes the communication.
2. Quote the email you are responding to. If you don’t, the reader may not know what you’re talking about. You can do this automatically by highlighting the message you are responding to before hitting reply.
3. Use a clear and concise writing style.
4. Keep messages short, preferably under 25 lines.
5. Write short sentences and short paragraphs (5 lines maximum) to keep your readers focused.
6. Break up text with white space. Use subheadlines and bulleted lists to visually break up your copy into easy-to-read sections, highlight benefits, and keep readers reading.
7. Avoid using all CAPITAL letters.
8. Be sure to use spell-check before sending out an email. Spelling and grammar errors can suggest that you are not educated or knowledgeable.

Make sure your readers can read your information! The email message you send may not look the same when displayed on your receiver’s screen. Follow these tips to avoid incompatibility problems between email software.

1. Know your audience so that you can determine whether to send plain text or HTML messages. If the receiver can not view email as a web page, they will end up seeing your text all mixed up with HTML code instead.
2. Be cautious with attachments. If the recipient does not have the software you used to create the document, they won’t be able to read your attachment.
3. Avoid placing graphics in the body of email messages. Graphics add to the file size of an email message and could very well take over the file size limit of the reader’s software. Also, graphics can greatly slow the downloading and opening of your email.
4. Avoid formatting such as bold and italics. Different email programs read them differently.
5. When mentioning a web address, include http://. This allows most email software to link to a URL and allows the user to click on the link and go to the web address. Many computer newbies don’t know how to copy and paste a web address into their browser.
6. Format articles and newsletters to around 60-65 characters per line with hard returns after each line. If a reader’s software wraps lines differently, your text may be hard to read.

Increase sales with user-friendly and compelling email messages. You don’t want to lose prospects and subscribers because they have trouble reading your email.