Like many of you, I have sometimes clicked the little check box while shopping online that allows the seller of the product to send me their email newsletter. When I’ve done that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ”I’ll get an email newsletter maybe once a week.” Much to my chagrin, I suddenly find them in my inbox not once a day, but sometimes twice a day.

StreamSend, an email marketer, recently released some guidelines for those who send out email newsletters, and right at the top of the list is a warning about overdoing the volume. Citing the statistic that 77 percent of consumers are already annoyed by the volume of email they receive, the company advises not to annoy them even more. Of course, you can send out email newsletters too infrequently as well, and basically become an unknown in the consumers’ mailboxes.

For construction businesses, email newsletters could be one way of keeping your name in front of past clients. The idea being that when someone asks them for a referral, they think of you. Former clients will also potentially hire you in the future. Dr. Jeff Cornwall at Belmont University hails the newsletter as an “old bootstrap marketing tool,” and offers some tips and advice about wading into this communication medium. He astutely advises to not even go there if you aren’t in it for the long haul since a useful newsletter will be missed if you stop publishing it. That in turn may send some signals out about your business that you may not want to have floating around.

So, what should you include? Offer the reader something useful to them, and avoid the tendency to make the newsletter all about you. The kinds of things those in construction businesses might include would be home improvement tips, problem areas to look for during regular building assessments they do themselves, and new product announcements. You can also include promotions you might be offering that focus on building efficiencies and energy use, among other things.

Think of email newsletters as tools to build relationships. Then think about all those things you can do with them that destroy relationships and avoid those like the plague, including becoming a pest delivering messages all about you.