In his book "How to Become a Marketing Superstar", Jeffrey J. Fox defines marketing as the "profitable identification, attraction, getting and keeping of good customers"…

In short it is getting and keeping a good customer. So we may look at email marketing as carrying out these functions by the use of emails.

If you prefer direct sales, the new Alex Goad's system Affiliate Payload is what you need.

We see then that there is the need for communication between the business owner and the prospect if any marketing is to take place. The traditional routes for this communication is through newspaper, radio, television, billboards, flyers, posters and direct mail. Email is a latecomer in this arsenal and is still going through its own evolution.

What must not be lost sight of is that email is only a means of communication.

The principles of marketing and money-making will remain the same even though there must be some adaptation to the medium, in this case email.

Don't hesitate to give Affiliate Payload a try. It integrates perfectly with email marketing.

The closest predecessor to email marketing will be direct mail marketing. Why? Because in reality, they are both direct response marketing.

By this I mean that you, the marketer, are looking for a direct response (eg. to buy a product) from the receiver of the marketing message. An example of a non-direct response will be a billboard ad, which normally is used for branding purposes. No one is expected to pull over and fill out a form on the billboard and send it in, or make a purchase while going 55 mph.

An email is an electronic mail and therefore you'll expect that there will be a lot of similarities between email marketing and direct mail marketing. But of course there are also significant differences as well.

For example in direct mail marketing businesses often risk thousands of dollars and have to wait for weeks before they can determine a campaign's success or failure.

With email marketing you can have the results within just a few hours for a single promotion!

Marketing through email is one of the most effective and essential promotional strategies online because of a number of factors.

Some of these are:

1. It is cheap – It costs almost nothing to send out 10,000 emails or 100,000. This is an incredible advantage over postal mail that can run into the thousands of dollars in postage.

2. It is immediate – You may have to wait a couple weeks before you can judge the response from a direct mail campaign but you can get response from emails within minutes of sending them out.

3. It has worldwide reach – An email can easily go to from Singapore to Canada as it can go to South America. The world is really your market so your reach is much greater. Of course a mail can go anywhere but it's much easier to get an email address than to get a foreign postal address.

In direct mail marketing, you will create a marketing piece and then buy a list from a list broker. You will then carry out a test of the sales letter before you do any mass mailing. Normally you are only allowed to use this list once. So mistakes can be very costly.

With email marketing you also need a list of emails to mail to and you are expected to manage this list instead of a list broker. In most cases you'll build this list for yourself so you have more control, and ultimately more profits at the end of the day.

There is also on eUserReviews.com a useful Affiliate Payload Bonus that is given for free. Don't miss it.