Email newsletters are an excellent means of promoting the products and services offered on your Website. Adding two simple tools to your newsletter can dramatically increase your readership.

As well as Website promotion, email newsletters are an efficient means of retaining current clients by reaching out and touching them on a regular basis. They can also be very effective in gaining new clients.

By providing pertinent, high-quality information in your newsletter, readers are more likely to forward your email to interested friends and relatives. This phenomenon, called "viral marketing," is a side benefit of email newsletters. To enjoy viral marketing, always include a link in your newsletter that allows visitors to "Send (it) to a Friend." The HTML code for this is usually free through your newsletter service provider or offered in your PC newsletter application. As your distribution list grows and your newsletter gets passed along, the odds of striking a chord with a potential customer dramatically increase.

To capture new clients as your email gets circulated, also include a "Subscribe to Newsletter" link within the email. In other words, make it enticing and easy for new newsletter viewers to sign up for future issues.

Viral marketing offers the possibility of geometric growth in the number of your newsletter subscribers as new clients also pass your emails along to their friends and relatives. To make it work for you, just remember to concentrate on providing attention-grabbing, useful information AND make your newsletter simple to forward to new prospects who can easily subscribe themselves.

Al Kernek is a real estate broker and author of "Creating E-Mail Newsletters ? A Practical Guide for the Real Estate Community." To learn more about increasing sales using low-cost, effective Internet marketing techniques, visit http://www.renewsletter.com