When is the last time you send email to your friends or family members? Email may become part of your life that you don’t even notice how effective it could be as a communication tool.

But the reality is still that email is free.

Although doing email on the Internet is nothing close to free, still it is one of the most cost effective yet with the highest Return-on-Investment (ROI) available to marketers.

Email marketing has been used to:

• Acquire leads and follow-up until they become customers or unsubscribe
• Acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy more
• Build relationship with customers — as a customer retention tool — to enhance loyalty and promote word of mouth.
• As a low cost method to tap into other people’s prospects or customers to promote related products or services.
• Make special offers to interested users to encourage them become customers.
• and so on…

Email provides a direct one-to-one connection to the recipients. Studies show it is more effective than direct mail. Marketers call it the most effective direct response tool available on the history.

So, there are many thing we could do with emails in business and marketing applications. What makes it so popular?

Email marketing becomes popular because of a few reasons:

• Sending email is much cheaper than most other communication channels.
• Email is a push channel. While it also has its own drawbacks, the ability to keep your brand in front of the audience is important.
• Superior targetability. Email is a personal medium. Marketers could speak to each customer in a personal tone. It also allows you to target very specific market through your offer.
• Great results. Perhaps most important of all, email marketing has been proven to produce astounding results again and gain, despite all the rumor about its ineffectiveness due to spam, etc.
• Highly trackable. Email is a very highly measurable medium. Although not perfect, the rich of data and reports allow marketers to analyze campaigns easily.

The use of email among marketers is still going up year by year.

It is true. Email will never be like before. Marketers have to be careful in implementing every step to start, build, and grow a solid email marketing program.

Ultimately, businesses must put more though into email communications — from gathering information up front to sending messages and analyzing results.

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