How do you create an email promotion?

well, there are plenty of free templates available over internet. You can select one from them. Also, the email blasting softwares also provide you with a wide range of email templates that you can use for your email campaign. However, as per my own experience, email template design is second most important aspect of any email campaign after the content, that plays a vital role in conversion. So I would recommend you to design your own email template so that you can design it in a way your target audiences like.

Regards,
Manish Chauhan
http://www.pixelcrayons.com/

An easy solution, and one that is geared toward small businesses and nonprofits, is Constant Contact. It's a Web-based solution, so there's no software necessary. They are reasonable, easy-to-use, and established as a market leader in their space. They also provide robust tools for surveys and event planning, which may not be applicable to your needs at this point. Their pricing is based on the number of email addresses on your list.

They have a variety of templates including ones that are heavily designed and ones that are blank and ready for you to add your own logo and personal touches. Image upload is easy if you want to add photos of the jewelry that you're selling, for instance. You can choose form a variety of standard Web fonts, colors, and so on. And they provide choices that serve anyone from a novice to someone who is comfortable with html and can edit their style sheets.

There are also webinars and "bootcamps" (to use their term) to help you get up to speed on Constant Contact itself and its various uses. And there are useful downloadable guides on basic features, effective email marketing, and image use, among other things.

They also make uploading and updating your lists simple, as long as you keep your subscriber data in one of their recommended formats. And they provide reporting on all of the traditional metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, and so on.

I am not a Constant Contact shill, though I may sound like one! I've just used it in a variety of different contexts, and it sounds like the ideal solution for what you're looking for.

Good luck!

Very, very carefully. It is essential that you know the laws about e-mail marketing before you begin.

Here are the basics of the CAN-SPAM act which can be found at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

The most common result of violating these policies is that your email account will be blacklisted. This means that your email recipients have selected to ‘block sender’ or ‘report as spam’ from their inboxes. If you are blacklisted from enough peoples’ inboxes, the internet service providers will begin to block your emails, and even to those who WANT to receive them won’t be able to.

A worst case scenario would be that the Federal Trade Commission (or some other federal or state agency) will intervene. If this happens, your fines can become high enough to bankrupt your business, or even lead to imprisonment.

I understand the concerns that Gail presents above, specific to CANSPAM. However, what you're describing (building your own list and mailing to those who subscribe) is the most basic and legitimate use of email marketing.

In other words, don't be scared by the legislation - you can email market to those who subscribe and allow you to email them.

To specifically answer your question, you first need to pick an email deployment platform. There are dozens to choose from and many offer free email deployment, provided you mail less than 500 or 1000 emails per month.

Of the free platforms, a number of them offer templates to use. Since it sounds like you are not an HTML developer, be sure it includes this feature.

Then, you simply assemble the pieces:
1) get your mailing list ready (usually an excel or csv file should be OK).
2) get your creative organized (in this case, making updates to the template).
3) track your links (you need to know what people are clicking on!)
4) hit send (only after the proof the message and it looks right to you!)
5) wait a minimum of 48 hours to gauge results; 72 hours is better.
6) start all over again.

I hope this helps. Best of luck!

George

George is absolutely right but I have found that most people who are looking at email marketing for the first time do not know the difference between targeted and opted in email campaigns and those that are sent to everyone they can find.

It never hurts to double check for compliance to be on the safe side.