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Email marketing has been a very profitable means of marketing products and services. It has continued to be used by small and large businesses, by non-profits, and every type of organization conceivable. It is used so frequently because it works.

Email marketing has the following advantages: relatively low cost, speed, viral (messages can be easily forwarded to others, without your direct involvement or knowledge), can drive traffic to an offline offer, and with the right systems, messages can be customized.

If you’re wondering just what I mean by customization, consider Amazon.com. Amazon sends product suggestions based on what the customer has bought in the past. This is a smart system. People are interested in some subjects but not others. The closer the the message is to what interests the individual, the greater the chance that it will be read.

With an email campaign, you can prompt traffic to an offline offer. An example of this is coupons. The bookselling company Borders often emails me coupons to use in their local bookstore. This is also applied in service businesses, which will issue “good for one day only” coupons to help fill in empty slots.

Perhaps you don’t yet have the tools to manage an email marketing system. You have two major categories of choice: firstly, whether to purchase a program that installs on your own server. Alternatively, you can also utilize a hosted service and have your email database stored on a third-party’s server.

Using your own program would give you more flexibility and opportunities for customization, but it’s your choice. If you want to look into it, popular options are Auto Response and Mailloop.

Hosted services like Aweber, GetResponse, 1ShoppingCart, and EmailAces are pretty common options. There’s usually a small, upfront cost if at all, but they also require a monthly fee. These kinds of systems can be advantageous in that you don’t need to deal with spam or server maintenance.

Email marketing can, if used properly, easily increase your revenue, help retain your customers, and be an excellent part of your marketing mix.

Tags: Advertising
Filed under: Advertising