Direct Marketing... You Have Come A Long Way Baby!
By Gauher Chaudhry

In the early days before the Internet, direct marketing was a key advertising method to sell products or services to customers all over the world.

Running a direct marketing campaign can be a very costly venture that does not guarantee any success. In the early 1980's, there were numerous individuals or companies who used to spend tens of thousands of dollars to launch full blown direct marketing campaigns.

You may be wondering exactly how does direct marketing work, right?

Direct marketing involves sending your sales letter directly to a potential customer. This can be done by renting a mailing list from a reputable company that contains names and street addresses of targeted people.

You can find companies renting these mailing lists in business trade magazines such as Entrepreneur magazine or Success magazine.

The problem with direct marketing campaigns is that they are limited to individuals or companies that can afford to run them.

For example, a simple mailing of 25,000 sales letters could cost as much as $35,000. Postage expenses, sales letter printing costs and stationary add up quickly.

As you can imagine, this type of venture is extremely risky. A poorly written sales letter could virtually wipe out an entire savings.

A definite *fear factor*.

You are probably thinking why anyone in their right mind would take a huge risk that involved tens of thousands of dollars right?

If the direct marketing campaign is a success, then it means a huge payoff for these direct marketers. They could literally pay off their whole direct marketing campaign and still have tens of thousands of dollars in profits remaining.

A risk worth taking.

Direct marketing has now evolved on the Internet in the form of email marketing.

Email marketing involves sending your sales letter via email to targeted individuals. The *major* difference is that email marketing has virtually no costs.

Anyone with a bit of ambition and desire can start promoting their products or services via email and make thousands of dollars in a relatively short time.

With email marketing, the orders come in within hours whereas with direct marketing you may have to wait weeks or maybe even months before you see any real results.

Direct marketing is risky because if you don't reach targeted individuals or have a poorly written sales letter, you may hit the right potential customers but miss the sale and lose all your savings.

With email marketing, you can afford to *hit and miss* because you don't lose anything because sending email is free. All you have to do is rewrite your sales letter and try again. Email marketing is a such a great tool that you can literally do it *everyday*.

Email marketing comes in generally two forms. Unsolicited email and opt-in email. Unsolicited email is when you receive email without your permission. This is now considered unethical and responsible marketers do not use this method because it results in complaints and problems.

Opt-in email is where an individual has given permission to a company or individual to send them email that may come in the form of an ezine or occasional email update.

All the successful Internet marketers use email marketing to reach their customers. Whether it is through their own ezine or a solo advertisement in another ezine, they are using the power of email to reach thousands of potential customers.

Unlike banner advertising or pop up windows, email marketing will continue to be an effective marketing tool because it reaches the prospective customer right in their mailbox.

Technically, anyone on the Internet with a quality product or service and a killer sales letter could be only one click away from a personal fortune.

There are many Internet marketers who have made a small fortune by sending out a sales letter to their opt-in list which they built over a few months or years.

Email marketing done responsibly can be the difference between losing money or making a personal fortune.

I have been reading a few articles from people (who I have never even heard of) suggesting *not* to start your own ezine. They suggest this because they believe the Internet is already saturated and you simply will not have the time to run an ezine.

Big mistake.

This is the worst piece of advice to follow. Having your own ezine helps you stay in touch with current and potential customers who you can continually market your products or services to.

The people making thousands of dollars on the Internet will tell you that it wasn't easy and that it required time and effort.

If you are interested in starting your own ezine and start reaping the benefits of email marketing, I suggest picking up a copy of my book "EZ Money With Ezine." In this book I layout a complete blueprint to creating a successful ezine money machine. http://www.ezmoneywithezines.com

The Internet is a wonderful invention that has given the average individual an opportunity that only the elite had in the past to make a personal fortune. Email marketing is here to stay and will continue to be the most powerful marketing tool on the Internet.

Copyright © 2009 by Gauher Chaudhry

Gauher Chaudhry is editor of Cool Cash Ezine. You can subscribe by sending an email to subscribe@freecoolcash.com with "sub-art" in the subject. Join Gauher's two-tier affiliate program by promoting his latest book "EZ Money With Ezines." Gauher teaches individuals how to make thousands of dollars in the ezine publishing business! http://www.ezmoneywithezines.com

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