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Guest post by: Karen Scharf Become an Author

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If you're anything like me, you're tired of hearing about the weak economy and other misery matters. But the truth is, most small businesses are currently looking for ways to reduce costs and spending - and I'll bet that includes you and your business!

Email remains one of the most cost-effective marketing media we have at our disposal. But getting your messages into your readers' in-boxes and getting your subscribers to actually read those messages continues to be a struggle.

Immediately Engage Your New Readers

If you can get your new readers immediately involved in your email messages and provide them with a positive brand experience, they will look forward to receiving your messages on an on-going basis, and you'll see your open rates improve. Some easy ways to engage your readers quickly include:

- inviting them to participate in a survey - there's psychological power in asking for someone's opinion offering immediate access to a forum where your new readers can interact with your current subscribers
- creating a sense of community decreases opt outs and spam complaints give new subscribers a freebie as soon as they confirm their subscriptions
- reciprocity has been a long standing offline marketing tactic that works equally well on-line If you don't have a freebie you can use as a subscriber bonus or lead generation device, I highly suggest you make this your New Year's resolution.

On second thought, don't even wait for New Year's, get your freemium created NOW! As marketers continue looking for cost-effective ways to generate leads, I suspect web competition will get much more fierce. The stand-by "subscribe to my newsletter" just won't cut it anymore.

Time to implement: the amount of time it takes to put these techniques to work will vary based on your experience. Implementing a user's forum will be the most difficult and time consuming. You can easily create a no-cost survey using Survey Monkey or some of the other web based services. Your freebie can be something as simple as an article you've written, a top ten list or a checklist. This technique is particularly effective if the freebie is only available to new subscribers.

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