The concept of "Article Marketing" is growing in popularity as people realize that it can be a powerful (and free) way to create free website traffic. If you're not taking advantage of it, you're missing out.

I've been publishing articles and e-books for the past 3 years. As a result, it has driven thousands of visitors to my website and created several new clients. I should also note that being a published "expert" will build your credibility and allow you to potentially even raise your prices.

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Most salespeople dread the idea of cold calling, and it can often help to send a pre-call letter or email. We have tested literally hundreds of different email formats--some with long copy and some with only 1 sentence. Here are 5 rules to think about when creating your pre-call email campaigns:

1. Avoid being self-promotional

You may think the purpose of a pre-call email is to educate the prospect about your company and services. It's not. Overly-promotional messages create anxiety with the prospect and sound like spam. Oftentimes, the less you say about yourself the more a prospect wants to talk to you.

2. Create familiarity in the messages

Instead of telling a prospect about your company, tell him what you know about his company or industry. Do you know about a trend or current challenge? Are you working with similar companies? If so, let them know in the first sentence of your email.

He had a great first meeting with the prospect. His solution was well-received and the prospect even had the budget to pay for it. After the meeting, the prospect told him to follow up in a few days. Early the following week, he followed up and left a voice mail for the prospect. He called again the next day and left another message. And another. Then he tried sending an email but still no response. Now a month has gone by and unfortunately he has a better relationship with the prospect's voice mail system than he does with the prospect.

Every salesperson has had this happen countless times. You may have even learned to "beware of an easy prospect." But when a prospect stops responding to your follow-up efforts, what should you do? As a long-term strategy, I recommend creating a lead nurturing system. Short term, here are a few other suggestions:

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Over the past several years, email has been one of the best prospecting tools I’ve used. However, the problem with the emails that most salespeople send is that they all tend to resemble SPAM. Do away with generic sales messages and never email a brochure or marketing piece to a cold prospect.

While there are numerous times you can use email, I've found there are 4 key points in the sales process where I use it most:

If you're in sales, you may feel like you're trapped in a constant cat-and-mouse game with your prospects, forced to chase them around until they're ready to buy. This usually means that you need to make relentless follow-up phone calls so they won't forget about you. But is there a better way to create top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) with prospects without investing so much time? For many salespeople, the best solution is to create an automated email drip campaign.

If you plan to use email to keep in touch with people, it's important that every email message creates value and earns their trust. This means that you'll want to avoid sending those marketing materials your company created. You'll also want to quit "checking in" to see if the prospect is ready to make a decision. These types of approaches are self-serving and worthless to the prospect.

It's time to start sending your prospects information and resources that are relevant and useful to them. You're probably wondering what kind of content to send. Here are my recommendations:

Instead of emailing your prospects and clients the typical promotional product information, why not send them a relevant article, white paper, or video that will actually bring them value? It's much more interesting for the prospect, and it shows them that you're thinking about their business.

There are several resources on the internet that will help you find terrific content. Here is a short lis:

Email blasts can be a great way to promote a new product or make a company announcement to a large group of clients or prospects. However, it is usually not the best approach. Here are 3 downfalls of sending blast emails:

1. An email blast is an event

We all know that a single event doesn't create a relationship. This requires an ongoing dialogue, or series of well-timed events.