There are a number of approaches that you could take with email marketing, depending on the number of contacts you have and how often you want to contact them.
For a very small number of people to be contacted infrequently you can manage your email marketing through your normal email client such as Outlook. However, there are many benefits to using specialised email marketing software once your database starts to grow and you want to keep in regular contact.
Email marketing software will help you keep your database up-to-date by providing an automated double opt-in subscription process and by managing unsubscribes to keep you on the right side of SPAM laws. Email marketing software will give you feedback on who has read your email and what links in your email they have clicked on. In this way you can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and improve it over time - leading to increased leads and sales.
You can use a hosted service - best for smaller databases as you pay by the number of emails sent.
Of for larger databases, or frequent contact installing email marketing software on your own web server /web hosting service will be more economical particularly as many small business websites do not use the capacity of their hosting service each month anyway.
Building your database can be done a number of ways. For example you should have offers on your website where people enter their email address in return for something of value such as an ebook or a coupon and so on. Alternatively there are companies which sell databases with contacts who meet the specific demographic criteria you might be looking for in your target market.
Please see our website for more information:
http://www.bellbirdwebsolutions.com....mail-marketing
Megan
using email marketing to promote business offerings 
