This is one of those questions that so-called experts like to ask. Is it out with the old and in with the new? Or maybe it’s just that the new is better equipped for handling the challenges of the old. Either way you ask it, the question is “Will e-mail ever replace direct mail?”

There undoubtedly will be those who answer “yes” to that question, but I’m not one of them. I certainly believe in e-mail marketing. But I also believe there will always be a market for direct mail – just as there is a market for radio, VHS and mini-skirts.

Truly effective marketing utilizes the best medium for the right audience. There will be some people you’ll reach better through e-mail marketing and there will those you’ll hook into your net with direct mail. If you use both channels to reach your audience you are more likely to get more buyers. Don’t give up on the old forms of marketing yet.

What if you knew that 20% of the e-mail that you sent to opt-in subscribers wasn’t reaching its destination. Would you change the way you look at your ROI? According to recent statistics from Return Path, you should.

This poses two issues for e-mail marketers:

• How can you increase deliverability?
• What is the correct measure for determining ROI?

Obviously, you can’t count bounced e-mail as deliverable. The problem seems to be, however, that we’re all getting more bounces than we believe we are because some of the e-mail we think is getting through isn’t. And we’re not getting an undeliverable report on the return. That most definitely affects ROI.

As an example, if you send 100 e-mails and you have a bounce rate of 10% then there’s an additional 20% that you should include in the bounce rate. Instead of 90 deliverables you should only count 72 deliverables. That’s a 72% deliverability rate. If you close an average of 25 e-mails from that 100 then you don’t have a 25% conversion rate nor is it 27.7%. Rather, your conversion rate is 25/72, or 34.7%.

Why is that significant. It’s very significant because if you can figure out a way to decrease the undeliverables then you’ll make more sales. Now the question for savvy e-mail marketers is, How?

Small Business Newz reports that marketers plan to increase their budgets for e-mail marketing in 2010. This doesn’t surprise me. The big question is, Will it go social?

Social marketing has climbed up from the gutter in the last couple of years. E-mail marketing has always been popular, and effective, so there is no surprise that is will see a surge in the coming year. In many ways, small businesses will be able to leverage greater returns on a smaller budget.

We’ve seen the melding of social media and other Internet marketing mainstays, such as SEO. So my bet is there will likely be a social component to e-mail marketing. What that will look like, I’m not sure. But I can see how e-mail marketing can become more social. Would you welcome that in 2010?

E-mail marketing is still the top method of marketing for online entrepreneurs. It will probably be a long time before it is toppled. For a while it looked as if RSS might overtake it, but there are still a lot of people who don’t understand RSS. They understand e-mail marketing. And they will continue to allow marketers to contact them by e-mail with a few reasonable restrictions.

Practically speaking, e-mail marketing has been around longer than most forms of online marketing today. Most people are comfortable checking their e-mail every day. But not everyone trusts online e-commerce still.

While user comfortability is on the rise for all forms of online marketing, e-mail marketing has the greatest comfort level. It is this level of comfort among the consumer crowd that makes e-mail marketing so special. In their own e-mail boxes, people feel like they have more control over what they see. It’s easy to delete unwanted e-mails and takes very little effort to say ‘yes’.

From the looks of things, e-mail marketing won’t be going anywhere any time soon.

E-mail marketing is still one of the most used forms of Internet marketing and it’s easy to see why when you consider that it offers one of the highest conversion rates. Think about it. People on your e-mail list are on your list because they’ve requested to be there. If you are doing e-mail marketing the right way then you have a double opt-in process, which I recommend. That means your e-mail recipients have told you twice that they want to receive your marketing materials. If you send them something they like then they are as likely to buy it as anyone.

I like e-mail marketing. If you have a responsive list then you’ll make the sales. You’ll get conversions. And that leads to more success.

Of course, e-mail marketing includes a newsletter, but that’s not all it means. It also entails e-mail postcards, brochures, sales letters, and other types of marketing done through e-mail. The key is send out a newsletter with a consistent schedule. You don’t want to send out e-mail too often or send too little. Too much and people will get annoyed. Not enough and they’ll forget about you. So once or twice a week is enough.

And if you do it often enough with just the right offers, you’ll see the conversions. Guaranteed. E-mail marketing works.

An autoresponder is a cool software package that will automatically send an e-mail to any e-mail address that signs up or opts in to a mailing list. It is most often used to follow up with subscribers to an e-mail newsletter or other e-mail list. You can send one follow e-mail through an autoresponder or several. It’s up to you. But it’s a good tool to have.

When you set up an autoresponder you need to think about what its use will be: Who will receive it, when they’ll receive it, how often they’ll receive your mail, and why. Standard information, right?

Of course, an autoresponder message need not always be a sales message, though it can be. The main advantage is you can set your messages to send and then forget about it. Once you turn the autoresponder on then anyone who triggers the response will automatically receive your messages. So you have to put some real thought into what your messages will say and how many you’ll send out to follow up with a list.

Let’s say you invite people to sign up for a newsletter. After they opt in, or subscribe, you send an automatic message thanking them for their subscription. A few days later you can have the autoresponder, pre-programmed, send a follow up message offering an upgrade to your paid newsletter. A few days later you can send a similar message. Maybe every third message you want to see an offer for a free gift. What you send is up to you. Get creative. There are no hard and fast rules. The main idea is to save yourself time by programming the autoresponder to send messages to people based on their level of interest. It’s an essential tool for anyone doing business online.

You did it all right. Took your addresses, made up your e-mail, sent it out, got your responses, double opt-in, the whole works. From the looks of things, you got a 98% delivery rate. All is good, right? Not according to this article in WebProNews.

It seems that less than 80% of e-mails sent are not delivered at all, with 17.4% not delivered with no return-path notices. What do you think of your open rate now?

This is common and what services are the biggest culprits? It used to be AOL and they’re still on the list, but not at No. 1 where they sat for the longest time. Now it’s Gmail. Thanks Google.

Gmail accounts for 23% of all nondelivered e-mail, Hotmail for 20% and MSN for 20%. The two biggest search engines account for 63% of nondelivered e-mail. So what does that do for e-mail marketing?

Comcast and AOL fall in at Nos. 4 and 5, respectively.

So is there a way to ensure that your e-mail IS delivered and delivered on time to the address that you sent it? Are there some best practices to follow for e-mail marketing so that your e-mails are received by those who’ve opted in to receive them? Yes, actually, there are some things you can do to ensure that your e-mails reach their destination, but remember that there is no fail-safe way and that there will always be some percentage of bounces. Here are a few tips to make your e-mail marketing go more smoothly.

1. Be sure you follow all CAN-SPAM laws
2. Ensure you mail your marketing messages to a list of subscribers who recognize your company name
3. Segment your lists so that subscribers receive only the messages they are interested in receiving
4. Use an e-mail service that is reputable and keeps a close eye on deliverability rates
5. Get a custom domain name
6. Avoid the use of the word “Free” in the subject line (it triggers spam filters)
7. Send your newsletter at the same time and on the same day every week/month
8. Encourage your subscribers to whitelist your e-mail address
9. Use a spam checker on your e-mail before sending it out
10. When you get a bounce on an e-mail address, delete it from your list
11. Don’t send your e-mail in straight HTML, use multi-part MIME instead
12. Go light on graphics within your e-mail
13. Monitor the blacklists and make sure your name is taken off any list you appear on
14. Use DomainKeys
15. Respond to any spam test alerts you receive
16. Offer text e-mail messages as an alternative to HTML (multi-part MIME)
17. If you are accused of spam deal with it quickly and take the necessary steps to prove you are not a spammer (of course, if you are a spammer then this won’t help you)

That’s it. If you do these things then you will increase the likelihood that your e-mail messages get through to their intended destination.

When it comes to online marketing there is no tool more important and more powerful than your e-mail list. I’m not just talking about for sending out your newsletter either. I’m talking about the list itself. It’s the most powerful tool you have.

There’s a reason they say “there’s money in the list”. That’s because for every name and e-mail address you capture you have the potential to put more money in the bank. How much money depends on what you have to offer and its price point, but without a list you have no one to market to. Sure, you can blog and build websites, but at some point you need to capture names and e-mail addresses so you can stay in touch and build a relationship with that list. That relationship is what is going to make your money.

There are, of course, different ways to use an e-mail list. You can send out a periodic newsletter, and you should, but quick, short e-mail blasts in between issues can often convert better than the newsletter itself. That’s because the blast comes from a recognized individual, but it’s unexpected. The unexpected e-mail can generate more interest simply because it sparks enough interest to warrant a read. If the e-mail message is written well enough to elicit a response then it’s money in the bank.

The most important marketing tool you have is your e-mail list. Are you developing it?

E-mail marketing is a broad term. It means more than sending out a newsletter once a week or month. It does include using newsletters to communicate with your audience, but it’s much more than that.

The key defining characteristic of e-mail marketing is a list. You can’t do it without a list of contact, especially e-mail addresses. Just like the old days of direct marketing, it isn’t possible without a mailing list of names to send out your mailings. But what should you send out when you e-mail your prospects?

It depends.

E-mail marketing encompasses any correspondence you undertake with your mailing list via e-mail. That could be marketing brochures, postcards, newsletters, autoresponders, coupons, or anything that you send by e-mail. The strategy that you use to market your business through e-mail depends on several factors:

• What type of business you have
• Your individual business goals
• The nature of your marketing campaign
• The needs of your customers

The best parts of e-mail marketing fit in with your overall marketing strategy. Everything should work together. E-mail marketing is a necessary component to online marketing because an e-mail address, like mailing addresses, is something that most of your prospects – no matter what business you are in – have. People read their e-mail and they especially read e-mail that comes from people they want to receive e-mail from. That’s why getting permission is so important in e-mail marketing. You know that if you have permission to send e-mail marketing messages then people will read them. And that’s why e-mail marketing is so powerful.

Have you hit a blogging wall? Out of ideas? Not comfortable with writing in general? You’re not alone. Small businesses have plenty to do–online and elsewhere–and we tend to avoid something that “feels like work.” There is another way around this dilemma and generate an online presence that’s beneficial to you.

How? By visiting other blogs and leaving comments. You’re networking, passing along helpful tid-bits in much smaller writing quantities than blogging yourself, and leaving a trail back to your site. Smart, huh?

First, you have to find relevant blogs and website content to comment about. You do this by creating Google Alerts. Take your keywords and keyword phrases and visit Google Alerts and set up an account. Google will send you email updates on when anyone writes about the keywords you listed. Google Alerts will list newspaper and magazine articles, television and radio announcements and recaps of shows in which those topics are discussed, and it will also list blogs that mention the words you listed.

When your email box fills up with Google Alerts, you’ll feel a little overwhelmed at first. That’s okay, it’s worth it to start reading. The online world has just opened up to you. You will literally see how relevant your topic is. You’ll be able to start to track who’s hot, which keyword/topic phrase generates the most hits, who your competition is and who you should be networking with. In the beginning, you need to dedicate some time every day, or a large chunk of time once a week to begin to gather information and know who’s out there and who is making it happen on the Internet.

Create a folder of the best Google Alerts and save the ones you want to get to know.
Follow your gut reaction and visit the blogs or articles that pique your interest. Did you know that you can leave comments on many newspaper and magazine sites as well? You can, and they get read by thousands, and get indexed well because these companies have the money to spend to get that valuable SEO (search engine optimization) placement needed to get noticed online.

Next, leave a comment–and not just “Fantastic!” That won’t get you much. Leave a couple of sentences that actually has to do with the subject they wrote about. Comment about something they said, specifically. Add to the conversation–in a friendly tone. Don’t sound like a know-it-all. Sound humble. Sound generally interested. Sound like you know what you’re talking about and you’re glad to be a part of scene, but you’re not taking over. Sound nice.

How? Tell them something they said or did right. Tell them you like their blog and their content is good. Leave one or two small bits of info that’s helpful. You can even politely disagree or offer another opinon, but do it respectful. You can even comment about another comment, which can create a conversation. At first, keep it simple and get used to the system. Your goal is to make connections, get known, and quietly point someone your way. At the end, sign your name, and under it leave your website, and that’s it.

Can you link back to your website within the body of your blog comment? Yes, but don’t go heavy handed, and only if it’s not really relevant. But sometimes it really is relevant. You have content on your site or blog that adds to the conversation–then go for it.

Chances are, the blogger/owner of the site is going to come over and check you out. They do–a lot of the time. Be sure to respond, say thanks for stopping by. This is n’etiquette. People online like to know their effort isn’t going unnoticed.

It might even lead to a guest blog. If you like someone else’s style, invite them to guest blog on your site–or you guest blog on theirs. This gives you fresh content, and it also does something else that’s really cool. They’ll advertize it on their site, and their readers will come over to your site. Cool. If you do decide to guest blog, or ask for another blogger to guest on yours, talk about how to handle links and promoting ahead of time so that everyone’s on the same page.

Another great way to build an online relationship with another blogger is to request to use their content on your site. Ask ahead of time. Tell them that you really like their blog on X, and can you quote part of it and link to their site. Nine times out of ten they’ll say yes because you asked ahead of time, complimented their work, and will attribute them.

Commenting is so smart and so easy. Three to four sentences on other blogs allows you to respond to a topic already generated, network, get your name out there, and build an online presence. The old adage, “Work smarter, not harder” definitely applies.