I'm willing to bet that 99.999999...% of you have at least one email address. Am I right? In fact, many of us have multiple email addresses. I'm also willing to bet that of those that have an email address, you check it at least once or twice per day. Right again? Do you see the potential opportunities created through email marketing?

Email Marketing Basics

Is email marketing a thing of the past? Absolutely not.  Before email, people used the post office.  Now, nearly 265 billion emails are sent per day (according to a study done for the average emails per day in 2017).

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that consists of gathering new email addresses of your customers, with intentions of marketing your business to your audience on a more engaged and personal level.  This allows a business to help their customers, keep them updated on new products, services and how to's, and ultimately results in bring in more money for your company.

How does email marketing work?

Don't confuse email marketing with buying a list of email addresses and randomly sending out thousands of emails to this unknown list.  That's called SPAM, and its against the law.

Email marketing is more providing a service and sincerely helping your client, in exchange for them giving you their email address and giving you consent to send them occasional follow up messages.

A basic process for a business to capture emails and market to them regularly is laid out below:

1. Business ABC attracts internet traffic to their blog or landing page through SEO strategies or PPC ads.
2. Customers who performed a search online find Business ABC's web page or blog post in their search results, and clicks on it.
3. Business ABC provides guidance and help related to the customers search query.
4. Business ABC offers a free guide, template, ebook, or something of the like in exchange for the customers email address.
5. The customer is asked to confirm their email and the receipt of occasional messages from Business ABC.
6. Business ABC sends helpful advice, tips and tricks related to the original search topic, and occasionally introduces a helpful product or service that may be of value to the customer.
7. Customer opens email and clicks link to helpful product or service, and makes a purchase.
8. Business ABC made a sale, and helped out another valued customer.

The most attractive aspect of building an email list, is that it is an audience that you have full control over in terms of marketing opportunities.  Its an already interested customer or potential customer, and you can send them marketing material at your convenience, rather than depending on search engines to rank your website on the first pages.

When done right, an engaged email list can literally be a money making machine.

Why build an email list

Imagine if you had an email list of 100,000 confirmed emails.  Every time your business comes out with a new product or service, you have 100,000 people readily available to you to market to immediately.  And these aren't just any consumer, these are customers and potential buyers who have already showed interest in your company.  If that's not reason enough to build your email list, here are a few more benefits of growing an email list:

• It allows you to make updates, corrections and communications that are important for your customers to know about.
• Its marketing that is paid for once in the form of time or money (writing a blog post or paying for PPC ads), and can be used time and time again.
• It allows you to impact more people in a positive way.
• It provides a backbone for your online business traffic.  Search engines have been known to change algorithms, causing large decreases in traffic.  Not email traffic though! That traffic is monitored by you.
• It allows you to gather more insight from your customers directly, allowing you to customize and perfect your product or service to the needs of your audience.  Send questions, surveys and request feedback and get priceless input from the people that really matter...your customers.
• Is your company growing and you need to fill new positions? You have a large list of engaged customers that may have your next best hire.

The list could go on and on!  The point is, a well built email list allows you to engage directly with customers who are already interested in your company, and allows you to keep communication and engagement healthy.