Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes. No matter how you define success, you can achieve outstanding results with email marketing while investing only a small amount of time and an even smaller amount of money.

Why Email Marketing?

1) It's Inexpensive
Email marketing is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget - and whose isn't these days? Unlike direct mail, there is virtually no production, materials or postage expense. In addition, there are self-service solutions available that let you eliminate agency creative costs as well. Email marketing is 20 times more cost effective than direct mail, and can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email.

2) It's Effective
Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your Web site or storefront. You can easily target your emails by source, interest, or list.

Overall, email communications sent to your prospect and customer lists, can single-handedly improve the ROI of all of your lead generation and customer retention programs.

3) It's Immediate
Email marketing has two great advantages over other marketing vehicles. First, with the self-service tools available, anyone can create and send compelling email newsletters, promotions, announcements or more in hours or days. No agency or production time is required to create and send professional communications. Second, email marketing generates an immediate response. The call to action is clear: "Click here to take advantage of this offer", or "to learn more about this service", or to "attend this event". Initial campaign response generally occurs within 48 hours of the time the email campaign is sent.

4) It's Measurable
Unlike other marketing vehicles, results from email campaigns are easily measured. Results are reported in terms of "opens", which report how many people saw your offer or newsletters, Click Through Rates (CTRs), which measure how many people actually clicked on the links in your email, and in a many cases, who actually clicked on those links.

5) It's Easy
There are Web-based email marketing products for small and medium businesses. Most include professional HTML templates, list segmentation and targeting capabilities, as well as, automatic tracking and reporting. So, you are free to concentrate on your unique message while the rest is done for you.

It is time to put email marketing to work for your business! To get started, check out the Email Marketing Hints & Tips Archives for tips on everything from creating a subject line, to testing and measuring your success.