Email marketing is one of the best new ways to promote your business, whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or a strictly online business.

Email Marketing can be split into three stages:

• building a list of people who want to hear from you
• regularly sharing your knowledge and teaching your readers
• creating opportunities for your readers to become paying customers

As your list grows, the greater the return you’ll see in the third stage.

Here are a few of the top reasons you should use small business email marketing:

1. The Personal Touch: Email messages can be personalized to include the recipient's name. When someone gets an email addressed directly to them, they are much more likely to open it.
   
   
2. The Fast Track: Direct mail campaigns can be very time consuming and quite complicated. Typically, a direct mail campaign can take weeks or months to execute. Then there is the added waiting for delivery via postal mail.
   
   
3. The Bottom Line: Postage makes up a significant portion of the overall cost of Direct mail. Then there is the added cost of printing the mailers and/or inserts. With email marketing, you don't have postage costs and you don't have the added paper and printing costs. The end result is that an email marketing campaign can be launched for pennies on the dollar as compared to a direct mail campaign.
   
   
4. The Results: Email marketing campaigns are easily tracked. When you can see exactly how many email messages were opened and how many email messages were clicked on, you are able to quickly gather test results and make changes to improve your response rate.
   
   
5. The Value Of Relationships: Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with existing customers. This enables you to build stronger relationships and increase up-sell opportunities.

Send email on a regular basis but avoid overkill. Keep your customers keen and interested in what you do. They will look forward to your emails rather than automatically deleting them.