For the small business owner, email marketing can be a low-cost and highly-effective way to stay in contact with existing customers as well as prospects. However, email marketing may be a bit of a mystery to you, so let me run through the basics, including: what exactly email marketing is, what it can do for you, and how to get started with an email marketing service.

In a nutshell, email marketing is a type of direct marketing that uses email as the correspondence mechanism. Direct marketing means you are communicating directly with your customers or prospects.

The communication is based upon a permission-based email list which your customers and prospects will opt-in to before they start receiving the communications. So, instead traditional hard copy mailing where you may be sending out advertising to people that may not be the exact right fit, your emails will go to the people who want to hear from you, since they chose to opt-in. [Read more...]