If you’ve been in business for 5-10 years, you have a hidden business asset that you may not be utilizing at all: the list of your existing clients. If you’ve been smart to collect their email addresses then it’s time to start using the marketing channel with the highest return on investment: email marketing.

One of the things you have to keep an eye on before you start sending email promotions to your existing contacts is to find a suitable Email Service Provider, because not all ESPs will accept old client lists.

Once you’ve found an ESP, make sure you don’t upload all of your contacts into one big list, but rather, segment your contacts into:

• current clients
• old clients
• trade show contacts
• requests for quote
• friends

Also, remove all email addresses that begin with info@ sales@ admin@

When sending to a list that’s never been used, you will have a lot of expired emails that will bounce, so try sending your first promotion only to current clients, then a few days later, go through the lists in the order I listed them above.