B2E can put together a customer retention campaign that starts with email and includes mechanisms that track interest. We can also help with email club development and management tools that help you get a firm grip on customers and prospects. Marketing Promotions Newsletters Subscription Renewals Directory Updates Membership Communications Seminar/Event Registration Educational Course Descriptions Product Releases Collections Notices Customer Statements Purchase Orders & Invoices Confirmations Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes.  No matter how you define success, you can achieve outstanding results with email marketing while investing only a small amount of time and an even smaller amount of money. "54% of small businesses surveyed rated email as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts." Source: DMA Interactive   Why Email Marketing? It's Inexpensive. Email marketing is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget - and whose isn't these days?  Unlike direct mail, there is virtually no production, materials, or postage expense.  Email marketing is 20 times more cost-effective than direct mail and can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email.   It's Effective. Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your Web site or storefront.  It is a highly effective way to increase sales, drive site or store traffic, and develop loyalty.   It's Immediate. Email marketing generates an immediate response.  The call to action is clear: "Click here to take advantage of this offer," or "to learn more about this service." Initial campaign response generally occurs within 48 hours of the time the email campaign is sent.   It's Targeted. You can easily segment your lists using a variety of criteria or interest groups so that your promotions go to the individuals most likely to respond to your offer.   It's Easy. There are web-based email marketing products for small and medium businesses.  Most include professional HTML templates, list segmentation and targeting capabilities, as well as automatic tracking and reporting.  This leaves you free to concentrate on your unique message. Good Reasons to Outsource Your Email Send to B2E Direct Marketing Outsourcing to a reputable email service provider (ESP) should be part of your email solution.  B2E works with several ESPs, such as MessageReach and Constant Contact.  We can help you find the right solution that fits your needs. Building Relationships with ISPs Recent research found false positives (opt-in mail filtered as spam) running as high as 19%, or nearly 1 in 5 emails sent. Getting into the inbox is critical to your success with email and a good ESP can help you accomplish this by having relationships with ISPs, the 'gate keepers' of your recipients' inboxes. Could you do this yourself in house?  Maybe.  You'd need at least one person, dedicated full-time to the task, that pro-actively reaches out to the ISPs you are mailing to before there's a problem.  Even then, you may not succeed. Representatives from AOL and MSN confirmed that they really don't have the personnel to build relationships with every small mailer out there and prefer to work with ESPs who represent multiple mailers. Tracking and Reporting Another big issue - without metrics like open rates and click-throughs, it's hard to know which parts of your email campaign are working and which could use some tweaking.  Effective email marketing isn't about the send - it's about the results of the send.  And that means tracking and reporting. If you're serious about email marketing, if you want to optimize your return on investment, you need to have robust, reliable and timely tracking and reporting. In most cases, using a good ESP is the easier way to get it. Keeping Up with the Technology ESPs have to stay up on technology - it's their business, their bread and butter.  They are constantly looking for ways to improve their service and provide additional value to their customers.  It's a competitive field.  Few in-house technology teams have that kind of motivation.  And even those who do often find themselves understaffed and over their heads very quickly. Small things, like an unsubscribe link that goes bad, can cause big problems.  For most organizations, it's not worth the risk. Managing Subscribes, Bounces and Unsubscribes Some in-house systems handle this, but others require that you do it manually.  While it may not seem like much with a small list, a larger list requires much more attention.  And now, with CAN-SPAM, not only do you have to remove people who unsubscribe, you have to do so within 10 days. It's time to put email marketing to work for your business!