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Free Internet Marketing Tools
By Sascha Menzer
Email marketing has experienced a lot of growing pains over the past few years. In the beginning, it was seen as the perfect marketing tool — cheap, fast, and measurable. Click-through rates were the only numbers that mattered, and people were still excited to receive — and open — just about every email in their inbox.Then, it seemed like the explosion of spam, and the sheer volume of email people receive ruined the effectiveness of email as a marketing tool. Even perfectly legitimate emails were being trapped by spam filters or deleted, unopened, by wary recipients who were concerned about viruses.Yet there are still companies that, despite these challenges, manage to generate millions of dollars of profit every year using email marketing software.In fact, here at IMC, direct email marketing generated $3.5 million in revenue last year alone! And the opportunities keep growing.According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, email remains the number one online activity of Americans — ahead of Web surfing and using search engines — and now that more and more people are able to receive e-mail on their cell phones and PDAs, the opportunities for creative email marketing are only continuing to expand.At the recent MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit in Chicago, Barry Stamos of Responsys.com even stated that people now spend more time reading email than watching TV!All of these developments, combined with the fact that email can be tested and measured for specific results — unlike other promotional methods — means email marketing remains one of the most valuable tools in any marketer's arsenal.Despite the obstacles presented by spam and volume, email marketing can still deliver an exceptional return on investment (ROI) because of the massive amount of time people spend online, and the proportion of that time they spend checking their email.In fact, eMarketer reports that email generates a much higher return on spending than methods such as direct mail and newspaper and radio advertising.So if anyone tries to tell you that email marketing is dead, don't believe them!The truth is that spam and volume didn't kill email marketing the way many so-called experts predicted. But they did manage to create a few hoops you now have to jump through to get your emails delivered and opened.These days, you need to educate yourself on the best ways to collect, manage, and store email addresses, and only send out relevant emails that people will open without hesitation. Do these things right and you'll be able to profit from all of the new opportunities available to email marketers... and continue to enjoy the impressive ROI email marketing provides.You can find additional information about free internet marketing tools following my link (just copy it and paste it into your browser address field, then press enter):http://www.freeadvertisingforum.com/webpage.php?referrerid=174606
About the Author
Internet Marketing Specialist
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/29809.html
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