What is Email Marketing and Why You Should be Doing It

Email marketing is the business practice of sending an email to people on a list in the hopes of selling them a product or service. The primary intent is to establish loyalty, trust and brand awareness.
Unfortunately, email marketing seems to have a bad reputation. Many companies think that if people see an email that isn’t from someone they know, they will immediately consider it spam and delete it. While this may be true in some cases, you can make email marketing work for your company.
In fact, there are a lot of reasons why you should be using email marketing – engaging your existing customers and gaining new ones, in addition to other visible benefits. By avoiding these marketing mistakes, you will put yourself ahead of your competition.

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1. It’s Cost Effective
When considering email marketing versus direct marketing, email marketing has amazing benefits as far as being cost effective. A direct marketing campaign can run you thousands of dollars for one printed newsletter, whereas email marketing costs nowhere near that much. Plus, e-mail marketing is targeted – which means you can contact only the customers you know are interested in what you have to say, and build brand loyalty by providing useful, relevant information in every e-mail you send out.
If you are looking to manage your marketing budget and get more bang for your buck, then email marketing is the way to go. Plus, email newsletters are normally quick and easy to set up – and no postage fees will apply.
Start building your listing by adding a newsletter signup box on your website.

2. You Can Track Data
With email marketing, you are able to track all sorts of data that can help you not only run your business more effectively, but see how your email marketing campaigns are doing. For example, you can see at a glance how many people open your email; how many people click on links you are placing in that email, as well as the number of conversion (i.e., sales) that are a result of your email marketing campaign.
You’ll also be able to track which customers have forwarded your emails, unsubscribed to them or marked them as spam, so you can see how your emails are being received and whether you need to change them in order to avoid the dreaded spam filter. This data will help you figure out which types of content work best for your customers.

3. You Can Automate your Campaigns
Unlike direct marketing, email marketing can be automated, making it easier for your company to schedule emails months or weeks in advance.
This can be an incredibly useful feature, especially if you offer seasonal sales or promotions or other events that are already planned for the year. With email marketing, you can set up your email newsletter in advance and schedule them to be sent out on a specific date to let your customers know about your sale or promotion.

4. It’s Immediate
Whereas other marketing tactics require you to wait for results, email marketing is immediate. Your emails are sent instantly to the subscriber, and you don’t have to wait days or weeks for a direct marketing campaign to reach them, or wait for your potential customer to find your website through banner ads or blog posts.
Plus, if you take the time to include relevant, well-written content in your email newsletter, you are helping build a relationship with your subscribers, thereby increasing the chances that they will turn into customers or that your current customers will remain loyal to your company.

5. It Can Boost Sales
One of the most important reasons your company should be using email marketing is because it can boost sales. Now, you don’t want every email you send out to be a spammy sales letter – but you can use email marketing to your advantage without sounding like a generic sales pitch.
For example, you can email subscribers when you have special promotions or discounts going on. You can even send customers special coupon codes to entice them to try your company’s products or services, or offer loyal customers a special gift just for them. No matter how you do it, email marketing can effectively boost your sales in a measurable and time-tested way.
Despite its un-deserved status as spam, email marketing is a highly effective way to not only engage current customers, but help gain new ones as well. Any company who wants a cost-effective, proven method to help build customer relationships and boost sales should be using email marketing on a regular basis – it is that simple.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

For many website owners, affiliate marketing is a great way to earn extra money without actually having to "do" anything. All it involves is placing an ad on the affiliate's website. There's no selling or promotion of any kind. The affiliate can just sit back and wait for the profits to roll in.
Affiliate marketing also is beneficial to the merchant. By placing advertising on websites all over the Internet, the merchant can attract customers and doesn't have to pay unless or until results are achieved. The more websites with which a merchant is affiliated, the more exposure the products or services get.

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Although affiliate marketing has its benefits, there also are a few disadvantages. For instance, the merchant has to share the profits with an outside party. If an affiliate uses unsavory means to bring customers to a website or the site includes material that some people might consider objectionable, it might affect the merchant's reputation.
A website owner is advised to thoroughly research the merchant before agreeing to affiliation. Not doing so can result in providing advertising for a merchant that refuses to pay commission fees, relocates or changes businesses without informing the affiliate. This is rare, however, and most merchants and affiliates have a pleasant and profitable business arrangement.
In some cases, an ad can be placed on an affiliate's website for months before a potential customer clicks on it or purchases anything. If the commission is very small, this can lead to a frustrating relationship. Both the affiliate and the merchant are advised to do what they can to ensure that the relationship will be mutually beneficial.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The website owner places advertisements on the site to either help sell the merchant's products or to send potential customers to the merchant's website. This is done in exchange for a share of the profits. There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing. They are called pay per click, pay per sale and pay per lead. 

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Types of Affiliate Marketing

In pay per click marketing, every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by clicking on the link leading to the merchant's website, a certain amount of money is earned by the affiliate. This amount can vary depending on the product or service that is advertised and the agreed-upon commission. The money might be electronically transferred immediately to the affiliate; the money might be transferred at regularly scheduled times of the day, week or month; or a check might be mailed to the affiliate at regular intervals.
Pay per sale advertising allows the affiliate to earn money every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate's website. The affiliate might earn a percentage, or commission, based on the amount of the sale or might earn a flat rate, depending on the agreement. In pay per lead advertising, every time a potential client registers at the merchant's website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate's account, a previously determined amount of money is earned by the affiliate.

The Internet is the Marketing Medium of the Future

Because of the rapid increase in the use of the internet to find all kinds of products, services, organizations and tools, a marketing strategy centered around the internet is the modern way to advertise and promote what you have to offer. Internet marketing is also the best form of marketing because it actually offers a way to track and analyze data. This means that strategies can be created, 

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tested, revised, retested and refined so that your website is optimized to generate as many conversions as possible.

What is Internet Marketing?

By definition, Internet marketing is the provision and promotion of products and services online. It merges the creative and technical aspects of marketing – design, development, advertising and sales. Since the advent of the Internet and search engines, Internet usage has steadily and rapidly increased since the 90s. The average number of searches per day has skyrocketed from 9,800 in 1998 to well over four billion in 2012 . That adds up to over one trillion searches per year on Google alone! 

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Not only are people performing informational queries, but searches for products and services as well. This means that the majority of people find out about the products and businesses they buy and do business with through the Internet. However, search engine users usually only pay attention to the first page of search results – usually the top few results. Considering that more and more business is conducted online every year, it means that competition for these positions has grown and that they have major value to savvy business owners. It has come to the point where competition in local, national or international markets requires a strong online presence. Gaining and maintaining a position on the first page of SERPs (search engine results pages) influence users to trust the credibility, expertise and reputability of your company.
Internet marketing is made up of several different strategies including SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay-per-click), ecommerce, social media optimization, social bookmarking, affiliate marketing and online public relations – just to name a few. Each of these strategies, when implemented effectively, work in tandem to boost website visibility with the ultimate goal of increasing conversions. A conversion is the action you want a visitor to your website to take – a purchase, a phone call, a download, subscription, donation, form completion and so forth. It is whatever action-based goal you have created for your website.