Email marketing, if done correctly, is one of the most effective network marketing tools available. Now I am not condoning "spam" which is a practice widely used today. Spam is the sending of information (usually an ad for a product, service or opportunity) that the recipient did not request. Sending the same message to thousands of people, whose addresses were either purchased from someone or harvested from the Internet is frowned on by most people and illegal in some States.

If you build your own email list and it contains people who have done business with you in the past, that can be an extremely effective marketing tool. Someone who has done business with you in the past, is more likely to use you again if your product or service was up to expectations.

With the ongoing wave of email viruses going around, people are becoming more and more reluctant to open email from strangers. If there is an attachment that could very well contain a virus. The only attachments that are normally safe to open are text files, i.e. ending with a "txt" extension, and images - "gif" - "jpg". But be very sure that the extension does not end in vbs such as - jpg.vbs. Malicious hackers might try to fool you into thinking it is a safe file, but if it has a vbs extension, it very well might not.

With that in mind, here are some highly effective methods to get your advertisement read:

Don't use a phony email address that looks like gibberish or appears to be coded such as 14sTTy@yourdomain.com - this is a dead giveaway of spam and will be summarily deleted by most people.

Don't use "URGENT" or "Re: Here's the information you requested" as the subject if they didn't actually request information from you. Many people use filters to automatically put emails with these subjects in their "trash Bin".

Don't use an email address such as friend@anydomain.com or addressed to friend@mydomain.com. I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone with the name of "friend", and I don't know anyone (nor care to) who calls me "friend".

Never require someone to write you via "snail mail" or call you (long distance at their expense) to be removed from your list. This will simply aggravate people who will pay no attention whatsoever to your ad. Face it - someone who doesn't want to receive email from you is not a potential customer, and continued sending of email only aggravates them - the consequences of this can be far reaching. You should also never send multiple emails to the same person as that is also aggravating. This happens most of the time with addresses that are harvested from web sites without the owners permission.

Never begin your email with "Thank you for sending information on your money making opportunity, now look at mine" or something similar. People know right up front that this is a "come on" as most of them who receive something like this are not in business.

If your email, has a statement that begins with "This email is not spam..." or you have a statement that announces "Under Bill 1621 TITLE III passed by the Congress this letter cannot be considered spam...", bingo in the trash bin it will go.

Never make promises that are outrageous, as most people are smarter than that. If you had to buy a wheelbarrow to bring in the twenty dollar bills from your mailbox as a result of your business opportunity, why would you share the secret of how to do it with anyone else?

So how can you use email marketing to your advantage in the network marketing game? If you do, you will realize the benefits of this very powerful tool. Build your own mailing lists and advertise in newsletters and ezines. This will give you a "targeted" market that will result in business. Spam will get you very little in the way of business and could potentially get you into difficulty - not worth the risk.

If you keep your product or service in front of your potential clients on a regular basis, you will soon realize the fruits of your effort. One of the best ways, surprisingly, is not to try to sell them on your immediate offering. Get yourself a website and keep the contents there informative and up to date. Use email to let your customers know about the new additions, and give them something interesting to read.

Once you get people accustomed to going to your site, the rest is easy, and this "low key email marketing" will not only be your best course of action, but will pay dividends.