When people switch on their computer the first thing most will do is check their email.
Email marketing can be a great way of staying in touch with your customer base and making an impression on new customers. Whether it is simply a welcome message, a promotional offer a fortnightly newsletter or quarterly company magazine delivered into your customer's inbox, email marketing increases and maintain product awareness. But good email marketing is also selective. Good email marketing should involve a personalised message that really reaches out to your potential customer.

What are your goals?

Ask yourself some questions before you start. Do you want to increase the number of visitors and therefore potential customers to your site? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to use it as a tool for conveying special offers or promotions?

Why email marketing ?

It's cheap
Compared to direct mailing or producing a printed newsletter the costs are next to nothing. You don't have to pay for production, paper, printing or postage.

It's instant
Email reaches your customers instantly at the click of a mouse and more and more people are using email to communicate every day. Research has shown that on average users respond to emails within 48 hours, in comparison it can take between 6 and 8 weeks for a customer to respond to a snail mail campaign.


Compliments online strategy
Email marketing goes hand in hand with the marketing mix, and should be part of an overall marketing strategy.

The growth of email
Researchers predict that the still relatively young bulk email marketing industry, which has been booming since 1999 will continue to grow through to 2006 when analysts expect it to top the $2 billion mark. What is more, businesses will begin to see email campaigns as an inaugural part of their overall marketing strategies.

Responsible bulk email marketing is based on the idea of permission. This is a complex issue and the subject of intense debate in the marketing community. Essentially, you need an email address owner's permission before you can send them a commercial email. If you don't have this permission, then the recipients of your mail may well regard your message as spam; unsolicited commercial (bulk) email.