Newsletter Marketing is a great vehicle for small direct marketers. More so than virtually any other online communications, it can level the economic playing field. Email marketing fuses email and research into a single channel and provides marketers with a powerful, yet affordable, tool. This type of marketing remains inexpensive, supple and easily tailored for any given demographic. You might think that email marketing reaches a small audience, and other more traditional marketing channels will provide better saturation, but that is rapidly changing. The most part of those connecting to the Internet from business use it for email.

When a newsletter full of valuable information arrives in the user's inbox, it capitalizes on these two main uses: email and information.

When applied in a business-to-business application, email newsletter marketing has even more power. Almost 60 percent of employed people have Internet access at work. Eighty percent of professionals and managers use the Internet, and 70 percent of those in sales, technical or administrative support positions use it. Therefore, email newsletters in a B2B application miss only a small percentage of your target market, the decision makers. And even this small gap is rapidly closing.

Internet use in the workplace is growing at a vigorous 54 percent rate annually. Soon, email newsletters will saturate a market as completely as direct mail, print, radio or television advertising.

Content. The most important part of an effective email newsletter is its content. People will give permission to send them your newsletter if you give them something in return, like content that helps them in their lives. Newsletters distributed with information that is relevant to the audience's lives are anticipated and eagerly read.

Many marketers, whether professionals or otherwise, reflexively want to impose their own company's achievements. They want to climb onto the mountaintops and scream about how great they are, how many sales their company made, the partnerships they are forming, and how their product is the best thing to happen since sliced bread.

The problem with this is these marketers are distributing information that is important to them, not to their readers. Select articles or other content that pass the following litmus test: Does the content provide value to my customers, or is it self-serving?

Ask permission. An effective email newsletter gains a readers' permission before putting them on the mailing list. Such marketing builds communication and goodwill without annoying the reader.

We know about spam all too well and we don't want to put such email in people's inboxes. Spam causes serious and expensive overloads to both ISPs and individual recipients. Since it is poorly targeted, it is ineffective. Therefore, build your mailing list by asking people to opt-in to receive your newsletter.

As you know, opt-in email asks users to agree to become part of an email list, and they are not subscribed to the newsletter unless they take action. Such lists are powerful because they indicate every person on the list has given permission to have their email addresses included in the marketer's database.

Once your newsletter is in tip-top shape, make the most of your online marketing efforts by integrating all available options including email newsletters, RSS feeds, blogs and a Web site. It's a cheap and effective way to reach your prospects and clients.