This is how your clients and prospects are communicating. Are you speaking their language?

For today's Web-savvy consumers, email marketing is an easy, cost-effective way to stay top-of-mind. With the click of a button, you can send e-brochures or special promotions to your prospects. You can announce upcoming events to customers or keep them up to speed on your products with a company newsletter. All without the old costs of printing, assembly and postage. Sounds simple enough.

However, before you get started, it's important to take note of some often-overlooked barriers to email marketing success. You must be well versed in what it takes to be CAN-SPAM compliant, be able to effectively manage subscriber lists by tracking opt-in and opt-out requests, and ensure that your servers are compatible with recipient ISPs. By covering all your bases before you start, you can avoid fines, lower your chances of being blacklisted and be positioned for success.

Confused? Don't worry. We'll try to make it easy.

Before we go further, remember that you should only send email to those who have indicated a willingness to accept your message. It's a courtesy everyone will appreciate and it's the right thing to do.

What you should know before you start
We all know that the Internet boom and the personal computer on every desk did much to make business more efficient. It put millions of resources right at our fingertips, and gave us the quick and easy form of communication known as email.

But progress is never without its challenges. The ease and low cost of email also spurred an onslaught of unsolicited commercial messages from bulk advertisers, which I'm sure you well know as the junk mail that shows up in your email box every day. According to Answers.com, hundreds of millions of unwanted messages are transmitted daily to nearly anyone who has an email account. So, in order to regulate this junk mail and restore email as a functional communication tool, the government passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing). This rule subjects the senders of any unsolicited email to fines of up to $6 million.