One of the objectives of Internet marketing is to create awareness for your products and services among your target audience.

In this sense, Internet marketing shares the same objective as traditional advertising on television, radio and print or banner and pay-per click advertising on the Internet in that they have the same goal. However, for small and medium-size companies, there's a more cost-effective Internet marketing tool than advertising, and that's direct marketing via e-mail or e-mail marketing.

Unlike traditional advertising, Internet marketing via e-mail is easy to undertake and cost-effective. First of all, e-mail is free. Anyone can send and receive e-mail without cost. What's more, Internet marketing via e-mail is easy to monitor since all you have to do is keep track of your e-mail correspondence and measure results.

In addition, through e-mail, marketers can transmit their Internet marketing message to multitudes through the snap of a finger. But probably the best thing about Internet marketing through e-mail is that you don't even have to leave the comfort of your home or office to undertake such a campaign.

As an Internet marketing tool, e-mail marketing creates a unique means of communicating with prospective customer that other Internet marketing tools cannot match. That's communicating with them one-on-one. As such, marketers can communicate with prospects on a more personal level. They can even solicit their prospects' response to their Internet marketing initiatives and, in a follow-up e-mail, address this response.

Moreover, unlike advertising, where marketers can't say for sure how many people bought your product because they were exposed to the Internet marketing effort, the results of e-mail marketing are easy to measure because e-mail is easy to count. For example, 20 people ordered your product after you distributed 1,000 e-mail messages, you can conclude that your batting average is about 2%.

Incidentally, that's a pretty good success rate for an e-mail marketing campaign. Any time you get a response rate between 1% to 3% for an Internet marketing effort via e-mail, you're getting excellent results. Meanwhile, if your mailing lists consists of a prospects list that was carefully selected, an excellent response rate would be anything between 5% and 10%

Here are some tips to bear in mind when undertaking an e-mail marketing campaign:

1. Always respond promptly to queries and product orders
2. Always say thank you
3. Always emphasize your product's benefits
4. Always respond straight to the point
5. Try to always include an incentive

If you can follow those five tips, you are well on your way to a successful Internet marketing campaign using e-mail.