It is free. Not only is your message/advertisement delivered instantly, so are customer orders! Following up with new products/services is free. Having a fantastic website is great, but it alone won't bring in customers. That's what email marketing will do for you! Without an effective and aggressive marketing plan, no one will even know your great website/product/service exists! Let's look at some ways to market your product or service through email. Opt-In List ----------- "Opt-In" is a list of prospects that have contacted you and have given you permission to email them about your product/service. Prospects contact you requesting more information or to join your ezine/e-newsletter and you add them to your Opt-In list of contacts. This is safest way to handle your marketing campaigns. If you do not have a person's permission to email them with your advertising/marketing campaigns, you are spamming that person. Spam is unsolicited commercial email. It is email you send to someone who you've had no prior relationship with. This is not way to handle your marketing campaigns. Most likely person you have spammed will report you and you risk losing your hosting/ISP etc.

However, one thing that we often fail to admit (except in private) is importance of permission e-mail marketing, where members of your mailing list have given you permission to contact them, or where they're past customers of yours. Obviously, these e-mail lists are always opt-out, so if someone chooses not to continue receiving information from you, they can easily get removed from list.

Many of you know that I write monthly articles for Planet Ocean Publications, which (in my opinion) is one of best sources for up-to-date information in search engine industry. Their monthly online publication, Search Engine News, is second to none, and if you don't subscribe to it, you're missing out on tips and strategies that could make an amazing difference in your search engine optimization work. For those of you who aren't familiar with Planet Ocean, here's their URL. http://www.searchenginehelp.com/moreinfo/

Stephen Mahaney is editor of Planet Ocean, and he's easily one of top marketing guru's on Internet. I spent several hours on phone with him recently, and he told me that Time Magazine wrote an article in their November 3 edition that dealt with importance and impact of permission e-mail marketing.

There are a couple of quotes straight from magazine:

"E-mail marketing is fast, effective and dirt cheap -- a godsend for marketers in an economy that has crunched advertising budgets."

". . . humble medium of e-mail is blossoming while flashier forms of Internet advertising are going way of Pets.com sock puppet."

"Little wonder that old-line companies like Ford and Procter & Gamble are joining early users of targeted e-mail pitches like Amazon.com and J. Crew."

Can we trust Time Magazine? I do believe we can! They're a highly trusted magazine and have been for years and years. Time is clearly going on record of saying that permission e-mail marketing is one of most valuable means of making sales on Internet, but only if done properly.

In words of Stephen Mahaney, "If you have yet to 'correctly' integrate 'permission email marketing' into your online business plan, then you risk being thwarted by your competitors that do. It's just that plain and simple."

So, while spam e-mail should always remain locked tightly in a closet (NEVER to be let out), permission e-mail marketing is a crucial way for you to keep in touch with your customers and those interested in your products or services.

Let's look at five effective permission e-mail marketing strategies, tips that many Webmasters fail to do, and they ultimately lose business because of it.

1. If someone writes for information on your goods or services, save those e-mail addresses! Remember that sales aren't always made first time someone hears of a service or product. One trusted source told me that you have to hear about a product, service, or company at least twenty times before you begin to trust that company enough to do business with them.