Email marketing gets a bad rap. Many automatically think of spam and get a negative feeling. For some marketers, email gets neglected because it's not as exciting as other advertising alternatives. Don't make the mistake of neglecting email marketing. In fact, email marketing should always be one of your top priorities. The reason is because it yields the best return on investment on your marketing dollars.According to MediaPost.com, email marketing typically generates $40 of sales for every $1 spent. Compare this with a $17 return for keyword ads and $2 for banner ads and you'll quickly realize how important email marketing is. A big reason for the high return is the low cost associated with sending emails compared to paying for ads.Also, more people are likely to see and react to your emails than other advertising options. A 2012 Ipsos Interactive Reid Report indicated that 85% of people use the Internet to check email compared to only 61% using it to check social media. Furthermore, Monetate found that email typically converts (i.e. sales, lead) 4.16% of the time compared to 2.64% for search results and .48% from social media. In other words, email is nearly twice as likely to convert than search results and about nine times as likely as social media.Obviously the type of marketing you do depends on your objectives, but email should be a part of your strategy. At a minimum, look for a way to build email lists such as newsletter sign-ups and send regular emails tracking what works so you can continually optimize your emails.View this great infographic from Litmus for more on the effectiveness of email marketing:

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