Email is a powerful tool when used correctly. Having the right message land in your customer's inbox at the right time can have a dramatic, positive impact on your business, while a half-baked or broken message can banish your future mailings to the spam folder forever.

While it is easy enough to whip up a quick n' dirty message in Outlook or Gmail and hit send, there is a world of little things you can do to elevate a good message to a holy-cow-I-have-to-have-it kind of message. To that end, here is a little workflow walk-through of free online tools you can use to craft your own blockbuster email marketing messages.

1. Increase the visual appeal

One of the most immediate changes you can make to your messages is to change its appearance. CampaignMonitor has a fantastic free HTML template builder which lets you choose the layout and color scheme for your message and then spits out custom HTML you can use to fill in with your own information. As an added bonus, the templates are mobile-friendly and look great on tablets and smartphones.

2. Tweak the message

Once you have grabbed the message HTML from CampaignMonitor head over to CRTLQ and fire up their HTML Mailing tool. Paste in your HTML code and make any tweaks you need using the dead-simple WYSIWYG editor. You can also use this tool to eventually send your message, but only after you check out the next three steps...