It’s cheap. It’s super effective. And you can use it to keep in touch with your most valuable asset: Your prospects and clients.

You can send professional looking emails to your client base for very little cost. There are even some companies that allow you to send mass emails for free.

But before you can take advantage of this great cost effective tool, there are a few things you need to know about email marketing to keep yourself out of trouble.

According to the “Can Spam Act of 2003,” you are allowed to email someone you are in a client relationship with. When you email, the subject of the email must be relevant to the body of the email. No deceptive information can be in the email. Your physical address must appear in the email. And last, you must provide an automated way for the client to opt-out of your list.

Opt-in means to sign up for an email list. Opt-out means to leave an email list. Once someone asks to leave your list, you can’t email them any longer or you violate the Can Spam Act. The process of opting out should be automated.

An automated opt-out would mean giving your client the ability to click a button in order to get off your email list.

Although I don’t know any cleaning companies who have been slapped with a fine yet, it has happened in other industries. The Federal Trade Commission can issue a fine up to $11,000 and even imprisonment in some extreme cases.

See the FTC Web site for full information of the CAN SPAM Act.

The good news is there are companies who create most of this stuff for you for very little money per month. You can get a FREE email service from Zookoda. Some others are Constant Contact, IContact and Aweber with a small monthly fee.

Another big consideration in choosing an email marketing service is how users can opt-in. With a service like Aweber and Zookoda, you can automatically add clients to your list. However, they’ll need to click a response link to verify their email. If they don’t respond to the first email, they won’t get on your list. This is called a double opt-in. The user is required to opt-in twice.

Constant Contact and IContact gives the ability for single opt-in. In other words, the user can opt-in on your website and not have to respond to an email. As well, you can put the emails of your current clients on your list. Your client won’t need to respond to an initial email to get on the list. The one major drawback with single opt-in is an average of 25% of your emails never get delivered. Even so, single opt-in is arguably best for cleaning businesses.

Once you’re set up with an email marketing or autoresponder service, there are three great ways to get email marketing to work for you:

One, put up an opt-in box on your website for prospects to sign up on your email list. You should give web surfers a good incentive like a free report, promise for future special offers, or a discount off their next cleaning. Above your opt-in box, put something like, “Sign up for our e-newsletter now and get a $35 coupon good for your next cleaning.”

When the prospect comes to your site, you catch her attention by making an offer to get her to opt-in to your email list. If she opts in you have verifiable proof through your email marketing company that she wants to receive your email. Now you have legal rights to email her under the conditions of the Can Spam Act even if she’s never used your service.

Second, get email addresses from your clients as they book an appointment. When they book, simply ask them if they’d like to receive special offers from you via email. Now this is a little bit of a gray area, but according to the “Can Spam” Act of 2003, you are allowed to send email to clients whom you already have a relationship with. But you still have to follow the Can Spam Act rules.

Last, get the emails of clients on your database. Simply mention you now have an online or e-newsletter. Give them an incentive like a dollar amount off their next cleaning if they go to your website and opt-in.

A word of WARNING: Sending a mass email on your own through Microsoft Outlook to prospects or even your current clients is a violation of the Can Spam Act. This is because you can’t set up an automated opt-out with Outlook. To keep things legal, use an email marketing system.

Start collecting email addresses from clients and prospects now. You’ll reap the rewards of easy, cost effective marketing.