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.