When he was about to start his new business Michael Katz asked a friend for advice. His friend Jack replied, "You have to attend a minimum of two networking meetings a week if you want any hope of building a business. You go to the meetings, you look for the prospects, you work the room and you `press the flesh.' That's the way it's done."
The thought of this scared Michael so he opted instead to try building a network through his e-newsletter. Now many years later Michael can point to an effective local and international network that underpins the success of his business.

Michael explains in this article why this approach worked for him.
"An E-Newsletter is more targeted . Even if there were a potential client at the meeting, the odds of the two of you hooking up are small. You first have to wade through lots and lots of people who aren't a potential match, many of whom often turn out to be other small businesspeople trying to get you to buy their services (a situation which my friend Betsy likes to describe as, "all ants and no picnic").
Your E-Newsletter by contrast, includes only those who have a self selected interest in your topic - the likelihood of one of these people hiring you is much higher than with a randomly chosen member of the business community.
An E-Newsletter is more efficient. The problem with face-to-face networking is that it requires the presence of your face; you can only physically get in front of so many people. An E-Newsletter on the other hand can be shared and forwarded by an unlimited number of people, and as a result (pay attention, this is important) it does its job without your even being there. Most of my new clients are people I've never even heard of, who contact me after getting a hold of my newsletter and reading it over a period of time.
An E-Newsletter is more . A quality E-Newsletter is much more than just a proxy for the exchange of business cards at a meeting. It positions you as a thought leader; it serves as content you can submit and have published elsewhere; it acts as a tool that others can use to accurately describe what you do. It's archivable; it's searchable; it's scaleable; it's trackable and it's interactive. You get the idea.
Bottom Line: I'm 100% behind the idea of building a network and systematically staying in touch with as many people in that network as possible. I'm also in favor of attending business meetings - as a means of staying educated, keeping in touch or simply putting on some nice clothes once in a while and getting out of the office."

Quill Group Business Accountants is a firm of business accountants and financial planners who specialise in working with businesses with ten or more employees.
Kevin Nicol, the CEO of Quill Group comments: "Our organisation is very innovative and technology focused so we have been utilising email to distribute our monthly newsletter for several years now. Since using the UTN web based facility we now have more control over this marketing strategy. We are delighted that at last we have the advantage of really knowing who reads our newsletter. We now have three different newsletter templates that we use for different promotional strategies. Its great and it really works!”