This is how I sell through email without becoming a spammer:

The Russian mafia murdered a kid for spamming.  Granted, this “kid” was responsible for one third of all spam messages being sent, but that should show you how counterproductive spamming really is.  I believe email marketing really is only useful for a) opt-in campaigns, and more importantly b) contacting CURRENT customers.

Current customers generally want to receive useful information from you.  I know that seems so cliché.  I mean when was the last time you thought about how much you would like your local stationery store to send you some information.  The truth is, customers only realize they want your useful information when they receive it.  Unfortunately, we’re not the in the top 100,000 priorities list for most of our customers… even though they are normally number one to us.

The real trick is only sending the client USEFUL information.  This can include an upcoming sale date, with the featured products, or a white paper on the subject you know they are interested in.  If you work in a B2B environment, sending the client useful information that directly influences their bottom line will be a definite hit.

You don’t always need to be selling something in your email marketing either.  Email is a free way to tally an impression.  You see, in advertising, the golden rule is this, “For your advertising to be effective, you need to send your message to a person a minimum of 5 times every seven sleeps.”  Anything less than this and your message gets saturated by other competing messages.  If you can use email as a way to tally 1, 2 even 5 of those impressions, you will be making an impact on your customers for little to no money.

The true catalyst for success in email marketing (with current customers) is creativity.  You can make dozens of free sales (free, in the sense that your direct marketing cost is $0) any given day of the week simply by creating a great offer, coupled with an excellent price, a sense of urgency & strong persuasive copy.  All of these things are directly influenced by your own creativity, which like email marketing, is free.