While it might seem like a small piece of the overall marketing puzzle, email marketing can end up making or breaking a business depending on the approach taken. Done poorly, email marketing can cause problematic reputation issues for a business, including them being labeled as a spammer. Done well, it can bring in a ton of additional revenue without a significant investment. Let’s take a quick look at four reasons to ensure that as a business, your email marketing plan will help and not hurt.

Reason #1: It’s a Crucial Sales Funnel

For many online businesses, email marketing is an important part of the sales process. For example, many companies will send out an email to shoppers that abandon their shopping cart or their purchase to enquire as to why they didn’t end up buying. This can be incredibly valuable data that can save lost sales and can encourage new ones.

Reason #2: You Only Get So Much Attention

With so much advertising going on it’s very tough to keep your prospective customers’ attention on YOUR business as opposed to your competitors’. By capturing the emails of people that visit your website or that make a purchase, you have the opportunity to get in touch later on to connect and to ensure that these folks remain loyal to your brand.

Reason #3: You Don’t Want to Anger your List

It’s critically important to ensure that your emails are sent in a manner that doesn’t alienate your customer base, causing them to unsubscribe and to have a negative impression of your brand. It’s rarely recommended to send marketing emails more frequently than once every two weeks unless your business has a very good reason (such as an immediate sale) for doing so. Keep it to a dull roar, or your customers may claim that you’re spamming them unnecessarily.

Reason #4: You’re Leaving Money on the Table Otherwise

It’s worth a reminder that any business that doesn’t do email marketing is probably leaving a small fortune in additional revenues just sitting there, waiting to be claimed. Many people just need a quick email to trigger a reminder to buy, or a discount special to convince them that now is the time. Businesses that send zero emails stand to gain zero benefit! As long as you approach your email marketing in a way that doesn’t annoy your customers, you’re all set.

Email marketing, and marketing automation software are the two main things you’ll find Robert talking about most of the time, when he’s not talking about his other passions in life which are his 65′ mustang and his wife Susan.