With the development of social media – and the problems of spam and information overload – email may be losing some of its power. Smart spam filters are making it more difficult to get your messages through to your prospects and clients. Yet, although it’s not quite as effective as it used to be, it’s still a cheap way to reach a lot of people.

So now, more than ever, it’s important to make sure that your emails are truly helpful, targeted and informative. Don’t anger your hard-earned database of prospects with useless, irrelevant spam. Treat your contacts with respect and they’ll respond.

But did you know that you can “automate” your emails by planning a series of messages that will go to a prospect based on their interests, a series of assumptions and desired reactions.

For example, if you’re selling home remodeling services, your first email could be about all your services. But based on where each respondent clicks (such as kitchen remodeling or painting or wallpapering), you could deliver automated emails that are entirely relevant to the respondents’ individual needs.

That way a prospect interested in kitchen remodeling would subsequently get emails only on that subject. Also, the follow-up emails can be set up to deliver better and better offers over time.

This tactic requires a lot of preplanning and is sometimes only effective for large lists, but certainly worth looking into. Once you have developed an effective plan, you can leave it to run for several months.