By now most if not all of us are using e-mail in our everyday business lives. Although I am still surprised at the number of people who dislike all kinds of electronic communications and most especially email, I think it’s here to stay in one form or another for the foreseeable future. Hopefully most of us are collecting email addresses from our clients.

One cool thing about email is that it’s relatively inexpensive. Of course, that’s also minus, as it can encourage a lot of pretty pointless emails, with virtually no barriers to entry. Still, properly used, it can be a very useful tool. And one great use for it is an agency newsletter.

For our Suffolk Agents’ newsletter, we use a company in Florida called Merging Point Design, and in turn, they use Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com) , a very nifty web-based program (part of the new Web 2.0 evolution currently taking place) that allows you to build professional looking emails, and also manages your email lists. It has links in all the emails allowing people to easily unsubscribe, to comply with applicable privacy laws. And people can also forward useful emails to friends who in turn can subscribe to future issues.

Our content comes from our Board members for the Association newsletters. You can either create your own content, use an outside writer, or purchase content at a site such as Foresight Publishing’s www.insurancenewsletters.com. Here you can go from individual articles for newsletters and web sites to complete newsletters with email management.

Of course, Constant Contact and Foresight Publishing are not the only ones in their field and this article is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation of them. These are just examples of what is out there. As with everything, the more you can do yourself, as far as design of the newsletter or creation of content or maintaining your email list, the less you have to pay others to do it for you. So you can totally customize your operation to suit your own agency.

It goes without saying that email newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with clients and potential clients. One thing I have found as I have gotten to know my colleague agents, is that we are all different so I will just say to make the content, look, and feel of your newsletter reflect the personality and capabilities of your agency, and start collecting those email addresses!