No doubt in the new year many companies and businesses will be looking at their budgets and deciding how best to use it in order to further promote their company and drive sales. Online marketing is a particularly attractive option, however many overlook email marketing as it is seen as a rather outdated form of marketing. Nothing could be further from the truth as there are numerous ways in which it can benefit your business.

One of the main advantages of email marketing is that there is minimal cost involved and requires very little in the way of overheads. Monitoring a campaign isn\’t a full time job and it can be taken care of by a single person.

Another obvious advantage of this form of marketing is that it is instantaneous. If your company has a last minute offer they wish to promote or there is a sudden change in the market then it is extremely easy to communicate a message to your customer base. All it takes is a few clicks for your message to get sent.

Email marketing can be compared to direct marketing in that it relies on an advert being sent to a targeted audience. The main difference is that your audience is able to interact with the message that they are being sent. With a well designed and written email you can include links back to your company\’s website, perhaps to particular products or pages which you wish to draw people\’s attention to.

Not only are you able to let customers engage with your advertising, but you can track how they are doing so. Using email marketing software you will be able to see how many people are actually opening your emails and of those people which are then clicking on the links through to your company\’s website. These statistics will provide valuable insight into your customers\’ habits and it will give you evidence on which to design future emails in order to elicit a better response. You will also be able to see which sections of your mailing list regularly respond or ignore to your emails. Based on this information you will then be able to target these customers with specific deals that will encourage sales, based on their particular preferences and behaviour.

If you don\’t have someone in your company to whom you can delegate the task of managing your campaign then help is at hand. There are a number of companies who specialise in email marketing services and they will be able to take care of every aspect of your campaign from the design stage, through to the ongoing tracking and monitoring. This will obviously cost you a little more, however the benefit you will get of a team with a proven track record will be invaluable. You will be able to carry on with your work, safe in the knowledge that your marketing efforts are being handled. This will leave you to focus your efforts elsewhere and seek out other channels through which your company can be promoted.

Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (www.extravision.com), a leading UK supplier of email marketing services.

Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (http://www.extravision.com), a leading UK supplier of email marketing services.

Author Bio: Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (www.extravision.com), a leading UK supplier of email marketing services.

Category: Advice
Keywords: email marketing, email campaign, ecommerce, internet marketing, e-commerce, sales, business