Amongst the various marketing strategies employed by corporate and individuals, e-mail marketing has developed as one of the frontrunners when an effort : success ratio is taken into account. Before counting on uncharted territories, you must know what e-mail marketing is all about.

What is E-mail Marketing?

Electronic mail is the fastest form of formal (read: written) communication that is known to man today. With virtually each e-mail costing nil, it became the easiest way of product promotion and capitalizing on the situation with the use of cheap technology. What was sent as fliers and promotions to our letter-boxes, soon moved out of the physical boxes to our mail inbox(s)! Earlier there was no knowledge or prediction of spam generation. But after spam became a hated word in the world of electronic communication, spam filters and suitable tools were employed to prevent spam in the inbox. Because spam contained (still does) viruses and other unsolicited material, it is best prevented at all from reaching the inbox.

Promotional letters that were seriously aimed for business promotion were suddenly a part of the spam box (when they shouldnt have been). With repeated efforts to optimize the page so that it was not labeled as spam, email marketing finally saw a healthy rise and today, it is one of the first marketing strategies employed by companies and individuals alike.

1st Hidden Cost: Web Hosting

Creating a website will cost you something; however the promotion be screaming in your face about the creation being absolutely free! Yes, there are free sites and site builder tools available on the internet. But if you want your site to be limited to your blog only, then the best thing for you would be to stick to free websites. If youre serious with your business, you will need to buy a domain and use a server (rent out) to keep contacts with your clients.

2nd Hidden Cost: Auto Responder

In case your website is visited multiple times every day, you will need to have an Autoresponder. Initially when the traffic is low, you can use individual mails but that is impossibility now. Everything from generating to sending mails, is done automatically. You just need to format the mail and the body with your offer and in no time will your Autoresponder program send out mails to your visitors (especially those who took the pains and signed up on your website!).

Quite naturally, using services of the Autoresponder will cost you something. This is one of the major hidden costs that are not shared in the beginning when people want to invest in email marketing and list building!

3rd Hidden Cost: Traffic Costs

Not everything is earning. Of course, this is a general business sense that without investing anything you cannot expect to get returns and that is exactly the problem when traffic costs are included! More than 90% of the newbies do not know at all whether the traffic that visited their site costs them anything or not! That is a huge number considering the number of people interested in internet based earning, especially through e-mail marketing!