What is Email Marketing?

In its broadest sense, the term covers every email you ever send to a customer, potential customer or public venue. In general, though, it's used to refer to:

• Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy again
• Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship
• Placing your marketing messages or advertisements in emails sent by other people

You can think of these three main forms of email marketing as the electronic equivalent of:

• Direct mail
• Sending people a print newsletter
• Placing advertisements in subscription magazines and newspapers

Why is email marketing so popular?

Email marketing is so popular because:

• sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication
• email lets you deliver your message to the people (unlike a website, where the people have to come to your message)
• email marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right