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A lot of media attention has been given to the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, but not much is said about the marketing advantages of email.
Email (electronic mail), as you may know, is the technology of sending and receiving electronic messages over phone lines by computer. Anyone that has Internet access (an estimated 20-60 million people) has email capability of some sort.
More and more people are discovering the advantages of email, and more and more businesses are getting connected to the Internet, as evidenced by the increasing numbers of email addresses and web site addresses (URL's) seen in print ads and other marketaddress is: MFoley@ProfitInfo.com and my web addressing communications. For example, my primary email is: http://ProfitInfo.com.
What advantages can email bring to your business?
Email Is Fast
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has expressed concern over the growing amount of email competing with the mail they deliver - and no wonder: For one thing, email is fast. It's much faster than mail delivered by postal employees, which has been fittingly named 'snail-mail'.
On occasion you may hear of snail-mail being delivered by the USPS that was dropped in the mail box decades ago! While those occasions are pretty rare, it points up the fact that mail delivery by the USPS can be pretty slow. It may take from a few days to a week or more for snail-mail to be delivered to destinations in the same country, and a couple of weeks to foreign destinations. You can pay for overnight delivery through the postal service or other delivery companies, of course, but it'll cost you more.
If you have a hot prospect that wants more information on your offers, each day he/she has to wait tends to dampen his or her enthusiasm. Time is NOT on your side in this case! Fortunately, there is email, which lets you communicate instantaneously with anyone on Earth that has access to the Internet. Email messages reach their destination anywhere on the globe usually within seconds or minutes. This means you can get messages to your prospects while their interest is high.
Granted, you can't send printed materials or other tangible items via email, but anyone with Internet access can at least send basic text messages of some sort, and depending on what type of systems you and your recipients use, possibly enhanced text (special fonts, boldface type, etc.) software programs, word processing documents, spreadsheets, even audio and video files. The technology surrounding email is advancing rapidly.
Email Is Reliable
Lots of regular snail-mail gets lost, stolen, destroyed, misdelivered, and even thrown away by indifferent postal employees. Not so with email. Within seconds, it reliably makes its way across the phone lines tying the world together to it's destination, whether that be in Anchorage, Timbuktu, or Tokyo. While not flawless, it's very reliable. Undeliverable email is automatically sent right back to your email address, and it doesn't cost you a postage stamp to find out that someone has moved.
Email Can Be Automated To Perform Certain Tasks Automatically
Many business people would prefer to have robots do certain tasks to free up their own time or to replace deadbeat employees. Robots don't complain, rob the time-clock, or call in sick before heading to the beach, but they aren't practical for many types of work and the cost is usually prohibitive. Unlike conventional robots, email autoresponders are inexpensive and very practical for automating the task of sending specific types of information to your prospects via email.
Autoresponders (also called mailbots or autobots) are special email programs very much like fax on demand. They automatically send email messages back to any prospect that sends email to it. This means that prospects can get information about you, your company, products and services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, (yes, even at 3:00 a.m.) all without the need for a human to follow-up each lead. The process is on full autopilot!
Email Is Inexpensive
Email service comes along with your Internet access fee, but it's sometimes available separately, if that's all you want.
Similar to the time-saving advantages of form letters, email lets you send the same message to many people scattered all over the earth, as easily (or almost as easily) as you can to one person...without spending time and/or money on long-distance phone and fax calls, stationery and other printed materials, mailing labels, postage, printer toner or ink, labor for stuffing and addressing envelopes, delivery to the mail box or post office, etc.
The cost of mailing a first class snail-mail letter may not seem like much, but when you send a lot of them like many businesses do, postage expenses add up. The same applies to long-distance phone and fax calls. Depending on how much you use email, it can very soon pay for itself, enabling you to keep in touch with your customers, prospects, suppliers, downline, and others - dirt cheap! The only requirement is that those you want to communicate with also have access to email - as increasing numbers do.
In summary, email may be a smart move for your business, especially if:
# you're in direct marketing or another business where your markets aren't just local, but are national or international;
# you send a lot of snail-mail;
# you send many long-distance faxes;
# you make many long-distance phone calls;
# you want to do one or more of the previous three things to expand your business, but don't want to spend a lot to do so.
Resource Box
Discover a growing collection of profit-making resources for Netpreneurs, Direct Marketers, Infopreneurs, Inter-Network Marketers, most anyone interested in profit, online and off, at Marty Foley's domain: http://ProfitInfo.com, or send blank email to this autoresponder: Send@ProfitInfo.com.
