Email marketing is promoting products or services via email. Today this form of direct marketing is commonly perceived as the most powerful tool for business promotion, and its popularity on the Web is still growing. Thus, in 2007 4/5 of the surveyed marketers admitted that email marketing is the best advertising tactic, because it has a positive effect on revenue, brand position and client loyalty.

Any advertising technique is focused on informing more prospects at the lowest possible cost, and here email marketing ultimately hits the mark by providing better results at lower expense. To believe the stats, more than 90% of Internet users take advantage of email option to communicate with the world, so, if you launch an email marketing campaign, the number of potential customers increases greatly. As for the price, email marketing is considered the cheapest online advertising tool, if compared with banner ads, affiliate programs and paid search.

All in all, the main advantages of email marketing over other widespread online business strategies are:

Global reach: Since the Internet has become the top media, leaving behind newspapers, radio and in some niches even TV, email marketing proves to be highly effective. Hundreds of people become the Web users daily, so, you can be sure that your message won't turn into voice crying in the wilderness.

Low expense: Basically writing, designing, testing and sending an email is more than 75% cheaper than using traditional marketing techniques, like print advertising, newsletters and direct mail. As a result, you save more money for your business development.

Monitoring: Today there are high-end email marketing tools which help you to keep up with the dynamics by measuring conversion rate, click-though rate, how a client knew about your website etc. If you aspire to success in online marketing, your advertising methods shouldn't be chosen at random, and email marketing tools will help you to measure the results beforehand. Personal approach: Remaining a universal strategy, email marketing addresses each separate person from your target audience. It is well known that personalized messages have more chanced to be responded to, that is why email marketing is a powerful asset in establishing credibility among your prospects.

Interactivity: To grab the customer's attention right away, you can enrich your Internet marketing email with eye-catching web design, videos, games etc. Quick response: The Internet is popular not only as the most complete source of information but also as the fastest way to communicate it. A customer can answer your email within a few minutes, without even leaving his/her comfortable armchair, while other advertising tactics are more time-consuming and complicated.

Initiative: Unlike using a website as the main promotional technique, email marketing is an active tactic. You don't wait for your target audience to come and see the product, but “push” your email marketing message to the prospects instead.

Proper targeting: Addressing your target clients results in high profits, while sending messages to every other Internet user can be considered as spam. Using custom-built and prepackaged lists you will reach only those people who are interested in your products or services. Moreover, email marketing helps to gain repeat customers which form the ground of any thriving business. Functionality: Advertising via email is a kind of round the clock marketing, that is email marketing works for you 24hours/day and 365 days/a year, making money even when you are sleeping or having a holiday.

Simplicity: Running an email marketing campaign doesn't require any special resources – you can operate the whole process from your house. However, a successful campaign requires creativity, experience and professionalism to be involved.

As you see, email marketing allows you to distribute the information among a great number of prospects quickly and without much expense. To sum up, an email marketing campaign can be more effective for your business growth than any other advertising vehicles, provided it is run by professionals specializing in email marketing consulting.