Published:

12/21/2011 06:09pm

Benefits of Email Marketing to Online Businesses

Email marketing is becoming a vastly popular and beneficial direct marketing tool, especially for small and home-based businesses. Used primarily to provide subscribers with information on service and product offerings, it has also been particularly useful in building a loyal customer base by helping stay top-of-mind with your subscribers.

More online business owners are turning to email marketing as their primary means to generate leads, not only because results are easily tracked, but also because it is an inexpensive way to market yourself on a large scale, at a low cost, allowing a greater chance to generate a profitable return on your investment.

Recently, owners of online businesses have begun relying on email marketing specialists to support or train them to expand their internet marketing efforts and enhance their online business profits, with a very small investment of their time and money. Because all Internet users use email, it's easy to reach your target client or prospect, by encouraging them to opt-in through enticing offerings and keep them subscribed through relevant and compelling content and resources.

Whether online business owners decide to engage in your services or invest in the tools and training to use themselves, email marketing is considered a low-cost means to generate sales leads and profit. In fact, most email marketing campaigns average just one cent per email sent-much cheaper than other direct marketing platforms. It has proven to be more effective in generating sales leads than many other direct marketing options.

Measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of email marketing is simple because most all internet-based software options provide sophisticated reporting features that track key performance indices such as open rates, read rates, and click-throughs. Using these results, online business owners can gain valuable insights on how best to communicate with their target audience, what their specific interests are, and enhance their campaigns and product sales accordingly.

Other very important benefits include the ability to easily send out multiple communications, schedule them for future submissions, personalize emails, and send out automated responses at pre-designed intervals. With all these features combined, internet marketers and email marketing specialists can easily carry out an effective email marketing campaign, allowing them to spend more time on other important aspects of maintaining and expanding their business.

Email marketing should be an integral part of promoting any type of online business, whether you provide a product, service, or both. Through this platform, online businesses can enhance brand reputation, reach out to a larger market, provide customer service resources and resolutions, introduce new products and/or services, and track results in an inexpensive way. Through email marketing, online businesses can achieve outcomes they would never expect from any other direct marketing platform.

Although it may take quite some time to build a large and targeted subscriber base, the results that this direct marketing platform will generate in the long run will surely be worthwhile.

Take a moment to share your email marketing successes and challenges by leaving a comment for our subscribers to enjoy.

Jeannine Clontz, IVAA CVA, MVA, EthicsChecked™, provides marketing and social media support, training and consulting to busy entrepreneurs. For information about finding a VA, download her FREE 10-Step Guide to Finding the Right VA, or to learn why Social Media should be an important part of your marketing plan with her FREE Report, Social Media Marketing Benefits, visit: http://www.internetmarketingvirtualassistant.net, or contact her at info@internetmarketingvirtualassistant.net