Email marketing has provided one of the fastest means of communication, which is also environmental friendly. Electronic mail has emerged far more successful and useful than its inventors could have imagined. Today email is just not a means of communication but has become a vital marketing tool also. Email marketing is used to define the multiple benefits of emails, and the profits that one can gain from the same.

Statistics prove that email marketing acts as a catalyst for Web users, and is a decisive tool in all their offline purchases. Almost, more than half the users purchased offline products after they got an email promotion as per a recent study. Emails that had coupons or coupon codes boost the open rate and online sales. Some ways in which email marketing can help you include:

Branding your company: You can brand your company’s image through creating graphic-based emails that are catchy and visually appealing. You can also use email ids like yourname@thenameofyourcompany.com as this creates a positive and independent image of your company. You can use these official email addresses on invoices, providing information flyers, and other marketing materials.

Targeting newsletters: The e-mail newsletters are a perfect cost-effective method for reaching out to millions of customers, especially with a tight budget. All you need to do here is seek permission of the customers to e-mail them. Not seeking permission can alienate regular customers or even irritate them. Newsletters can be sent out through sign up options at various locations like your website.

Auto responder benefits: Email marketing allows you to be in touch with your customer 24X7. You can use auto responder services to let them know that their problem or query would be sorted out immediately, and thus let them know that customer satisfaction is vital for you.

Campaigning or marketing: Through emails one can also trigger campaign based interest and the results can be determined by clicks that you get on your website. This is ideal for launch of a new product or promoting a new offer.

Generation of repeat sales: Promote your old offers or get in touch with clients by reaching out to them on their birthdays and anniversaries. This is a great way to enhance customer loyalty.

Viral marketing: Through this process, you can ask your customers to forward their favorite products to other friends or suggest your brand to others. This proves to be one of the most affective and reliable marketing tools.

Catering to different interest groups: You can sort out different groups on the basis of their interest, preference of choice, gender, age, etc. Then you can categorize the emails on the basis of these factors and reach out to customers with products that you think they would love the most.

There are a lot of other ways in which you can use email marketing for promoting your product. This helps you in retaining older customers, even as you gain news ones and enhance revenues.

Email blast is actually the act of sending out one email to a large mailing list. This used to be something that most marketers used when the internet was new, however people soon grew tired of it and it became known as spam. An email blast can come from stores and businesses that send out one email to everyone on their list informing them of either a sale or a special announcement.

The biggest problem with an email blast is that it does not give you an opportunity to build a relationship with your customer. You are primarily just throwing something at what is mostly a bunch of email addresses hoping that someone will take notice of it. This sort of email marketing is almost dead as even free email service providers such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail will most surely throw your email into the spam folder.

The major difference between a newsletter and an email blast is with a newsletter your subscribers have willingly subscribed to hear from you. A newsletter helps you build a relationship with your subscribers who eventually and hopefully become paying customers.

Email blast might be good for one day sales offers or partner offers but even then for it to work you will need to have a really large database of email addresses. Out of probably a thousand email addresses there might be a few people who might visit your website and out of those there probably might be one or two people who buy from you.

Today’s internet marketing is all about building long lasting relationships. It’s about reaching out and attracting people to your business. If anything email blasting is just going to give you a bad name, so if you are really serious about promoting your services and products build a targeted email newsletter subscriber list.