Successful Email Marketing

Contrary to what you may think, email marketing remains an effective and COST effective method of staying in touch with people who want to hear from you. Remember, we're not talking about blasting out millions of emails to people who don't know you from Adam. That's considered SPAMMING. Effective email marketing is at the crux of RELATIONSHIP and PERMISSION marketing and is still effective when you email to people who volunteer to learn about what your business has to offer.

According to alternative marketing guru and Squidoo founder, Seth Godin, "By talking only to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message," he writes. "It serves both customers and marketers in a symbiotic exchange."

And there's even more good news on the email marketing front. According to a recent Search Marketing Fact Pack assembled by Ad Age Magazine, marketing dollars spent on email marketing will increase from 3.19 million dollars a year in 2008 to almost 3.6 million in 2009. But the real kicker is that click-through rates are actually CLIMBING, not going down, with click-throughs improving from 11.5% in 2007, to 11,9% in 2008 to a projected 12.6% click-through rate in 2010!

This means that email marketing will INCREASE in effectiveness as a way to counter the growing ineffectiveness of more traditional methods of ""intrusion" marketing.

But selecting the RIGHT email marketing tools is critical to both your success and your sanity. Read on to find the email marketing companies and tools we recommend and those we don't and why.