Email generates the best ROI of all marketing channels. Find out how to get a piece of the pie and turn the cold, hard numbers into a success story.

In this article:
Introduction
Know the facts 
Do your math
Share the successes

Email marketing works. Studies from numerous sources support this. The Direct Marketing Association, for example, reports that email delivers an eye-popping ROI when compared to other media: $57.25 for every dollar spent on it in 2005, compared to $7.08 for every dollar spent on print catalogs, and $22.52 for every dollar spent on non-email internet marketing.

Done right, it does even better. Jupiter Research has found that engaging audiences in more relevant communications increases net profits by an average of 18 times more than broadcast mailing. And marketers back up the claims.

(Visit EmailStatCenter for hundreds of more email-related metrics, including many budgeting and ROI-related stats.)

According to Internet Retailer, 50.6 percent of internet retailers report that 6 percent or more of their sales come from email marketing, while another 25 percent say the proportion is over 11 percent.

In addition, 45 percent of chief marketing officers say their best performing online advertising tactic is emailing an in-house list, according to the CMO Council in 2006.

Despite these statistics and success stories, email programs remain under-funded compared to other marketing tactics. The latest IAB/PWC report on digital marketing spending in 2006 put email at only 2 percent of overall budgets.

"Companies are reticent to spend the dollars in the email marketing areas for a few reasons," says Mark Politi, VP, marketing and media relations for Planetwide Media. Those reasons include:

1. Lack of knowledge of how to send out large email blasts legally and not be considered a spammer.
2. Lack of an internal email database list to work with.
3. Lack of an email rental source to target the correct demographic.
4. Proper measurable metrics to prove ROI for the campaign. Unique custom landing pages that can measure visits, downloads, sign-ups and purchases.
5. Work involved compared to other online advertising programs make an email campaign low on the totem pole.

But to generate the type of ROI mentioned above, it takes investments in back-end technology for such tasks as targeting, email experts to ensure compliance with legislation and ISP guidelines, and creative specialists to write stellar copy.

So if you can get more, you can make more. Here's how to do it.

Next: Know the facts