"Email is the fastest, most flexible, cost efficient, personalized and targeted communication medium in the world today." Peppers & Rogers Group

Email is the most powerful tool in a marketer's arsenal. It's efficient at targeting particular groups, it can be tailored to the recipient's interests, it can be personalized, it allows for instant response, and it's inexpensive to implement. Permission email, when done correctly, is an optimal tool for customer retention and relationship building.

What The Experts Are Saying About Email Promotions

HTML email will become the central point of customer contact as it delivers not just marketing, but also transactions and customer service. But the infrastructure and skills required to personalize, deliver, and analyze such sophisticated email campaigns will force firms to turn to outside experts. Forrester Research.

"Emails popularity as a marketing tool is growing…opt-in email is emerging as especially attractive, due to its reach, relative low cost and proven effectiveness," says Geoffrey Ramsey, Statmaster at eMarketer.

Internet users lead more active lives than offliners - 89% go out to dinner, 77% participate in physical activities regularly, and 65% invite friends to their house at least once a month. Roper Starch Worldwide.

The rapid response rates for email marketing programs (which average 80% return within 48 hours vs. six to eight weeks for traditional direct marketing methods) is building the huge surge in demand for outsourced volume email solutions. Jupiter Communications.

More than 168 million US adults, over 60% of the adult population 16 and over, are online. NielsonNetRatings.

Email is the current dominant Internet application, used more frequently than the World Wide Web. eMarketer.

62% of the recipients of permission email are curious or eager to read it. eMarketer.

Retaining customers through email is one-tenth the cost of retaining customers through direct mail. eMarketer.

The market for email marketing services will grow from $156 million in 1999 to $4.8 billion in 2004 with an estimated 200 billion emails sent annually by marketers in the US by 2004. Forrester Research.

Worldwide direct e-mail will balloon from $164 million in 1999 to $7.3 billion in 2005. Email marketing offers fast responses along with a high rate of return due to the low cost of the medium. "Businesses are beginning to perceive e-mail marketing as the silver bullet for acquisition and retention strategies," said Michele Slack, a senior analyst at Jupiter.