WITH ALL THE NEW technologies rising in popularity—Twitter, social media, instant messaging—is e-mail still a viable way to reach prospects and convert them to clients?

In the business-to-business world, prospects and clients still find e-mail to be one of the most valuable sources of information during the buying process, according to MarketingSherpa. Buyers said they use e-mail for information almost as often as search engines like Google. They use search 37 percent of the time and e-mail 32 percent. They also ranked direct mail (19 percent) well above social networks (12 percent).

As a small-business owner, you might hear a lot of buzz about search engine optimization and social networks—and they are important tools. But a good, solid e-mail campaign to your clients and prospects remains one of the most effective tools you have. This article gives four steps for creating effective e-mail campaigns.

Know your customer
The top two reasons people sign up to read more e-mails from you are: that it will help them in their jobs, and that the e-mail will offer fresh insights and ideas. The third reason identified in the MarketingSherpa study was that the e-mails represent an area they want to learn about.

Software that allows you to send e-mails and track lead activities is getting smarter all the time. Consider using marketing software that lets you segment your e-mail lists by interest, or trigger communications based upon a leads activity. This way if you send out a general e-mail and Joe clicks on a link you provide to an offer, you can send him more e-mails about that product or service, while at the same time you’re sending Mary specific e-mails about the very different topic she expressed interest in.

If you don’t have that kind of software in place yet, you can play with segmenting by sending out e-mails with multiple links that direct people to different pages of your Web site. Then by using a free tool like Google Analytics, you can see which pages are getting the most traffic. This will start you down the path of understanding lead interests, and customizing your e-mails based on what you know and learn about your prospects and customers.

The flip side of knowing your customer is to let your customer know you. Personal “from” lines get much better open rates. If you can, set up your e-mails to display a person’s name in the “from” line. Don’t use a noreply@yourcompany.com address. Make sure someone is getting the replies, responding, routing them. Make your e-mail marketing efforts a conversation between two human beings.