A lot of media attention has been given to the Internet, especially the part called the World Wide Web, but not much is said about the advantages of e-mail.

E-mail (electronic mail), as you may know, is the technology of sending and receiving electronic messages over phone lines by computer. Anyone that has Internet access (an estimated 20-60 million people) has e-mail capability of some sort.

More and more people are discovering the advantages of e- mail, and more and more businesses are getting connected to the Internet, as evidenced by the increasing numbers of e-mail addresses and web site addresses (URL's) seen in print ads and other marketing communications. For example, my e-mail address is: and the URL for my web site, Global Profit$ Business Success Resource Center, is: http://www.infohwy.com/~victory/

What advantages can e-mail bring to your business?

E-mail Is Fast

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has expressed concern over the growing amount of e-mail competing with the mail they deliver - and no wonder: For one thing, e-mail is fast. It's much faster than mail delivered by postal employees, which has been fittingly named 'snail-mail'.

On occasion you may hear of snail-mail being delivered by the USPS that was dropped in the mail box decades ago! While those occasions are pretty rare, it points up the fact that mail delivery by the USPS can be pretty slow. It may take from a few days to a week or more for snail-mail to be delivered to destinations in the same country, and a couple of weeks to foreign destinations. You can pay for overnight delivery through the postal service or other delivery companies, of course, but it'll cost you more.

If you have a hot prospect that wants more information on your offers, each day he/she has to wait tends to dampen his/her enthusiasm. Time is NOT on your side in this case! Fortunately, there is e-mail, which lets you communicate instantaneously with anyone on Earth that has access to the Internet. E-mail messages reach their destination anywhere on the globe usually within seconds or minutes. This means you can get messages to your prospects while their interest is high.

Granted, you can't send printed materials or other tangible items via e-mail, but anyone with Internet access can at least send basic text messages of some sort, and depending on what type of systems you and your recipients use, possibly enhanced text (special fonts, boldface type, etc.) software programs, word processing documents, spreadsheets, even audio and video files. The technology surrounding e- mail is advancing rapidly.

E-Mail Is Reliable

Lots of regular snail-mail gets lost, stolen, destroyed, misdelivered, and even thrown away by indifferent postal employees. Not so with e-mail. Within seconds, it reliably makes its way across the phone lines tying the world together to it's destination, whether that be in Anchorage, Timbuktu, or Tokyo. While not flawless, it's very reliable. Undeliverable e-mail is automatically sent right back to your e-mail address, and it doesn't cost you a postage stamp to find out that someone has moved.

E-Mail Can Be Automated To Perform Certain Tasks Automatically

Many business people would prefer to have robots do certain tasks to free up their own time or to replace deadbeat employees. Robots don't complain, rob the time-clock, or call in sick before heading to the beach, but they aren't practical for many types of work and the cost is usually prohibitive. Unlike conventional robots, e-mail autoresponders are inexpensive and very practical for automating the task of sending specific types of information to your prospects via e-mail.

Autoresponders (also called mailbots or autobots) are special e-mail programs very much like fax on demand. They automatically send e-mail messages back to any prospect that sends e-mail to it.

This means that prospects can get information about you, your company, products and services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, (yes, even at 3:00 a.m.) all without the need for a human to follow-up each lead. The process is on full autopilot!

E-Mail Is Inexpensive

E-mail service comes along with your Internet access fee, but it's sometimes available separately, if that's all you want.

Similar to the time-saving advantages of form letters, e- mail lets you send the same message to many people scattered all over the earth, as easily (or almost as easily) as you can to one person...without spending time and/or money on:

# long-distance phone and fax calls;
# stationery and other printed materials;
# mailing labels;
# postage;
# printer toner or ink;
# labor for stuffing and addressing envelopes;
# delivery to the mail box or post office.

The cost of mailing a first class snail-mail letter may not seem like much, but when you send a lot of them like many businesses do, postage expenses add up. The same applies to long-distance phone and fax calls. Depending on how much you use e-mail, it can very soon pay for itself, enabling you to keep in touch with your customers, prospects, suppliers, MLM downline, etc. - dirt cheap! The only requirement is that those you want to communicate with must have access to e- mail - as increasing numbers do.

In summary, e-mail may be a smart move for your business, especially if:

# you're in direct marketing or another business where your markets aren't just local, but are national or international;
# you send a lot of snail-mail;
# you send many long-distance faxes;
# you make many long-distance phone calls;
# you want to do one or more of the previous three things to expand your business, but don't want to spend a lot to do so.

Here some other aspects of e-mail that you'll eventually want to learn about as marketing tools:

*Mailing Lists

The two types of e-mail mailing lists are:

1) One-way lists - These are used for sending things such as e-mail newsletters and announcement lists.

2) Two-way lists - These are discussion lists which allow all members of the list to post messages that are distributed to all other members on the list. All members of a discussion list hold some interest in common.

*Usenet Newsgroups - These are forums where messages can be posted for others to read. There are thousands of such forums in existence.

Using the right techniques - without spamming others and going down in 'flames' - the above marketing channels can be used to sell various types of products and services. All through the useful tool called e-mail.