The Harvard Business Review recently posted about the value of email marketing. Arthur Middleton Hughes makes excellent points about the high return on investment not only due to email marketing’s low start up costs, but also the value to the consumer.

Here’s Huges:

A properly structured email message provides this benefit to the marketer because it provides benefits to consumers. A TV, print, or direct mail ad is what it is. On email the ad is much more. Because of electronic links, those who open your emails can do their own research: they can explore and see any of the thousands of products that you sell. They can see the colors and sizes. They can, and they do, read ratings and reviews. They can put products in their shopping carts and buy them.

With email, when your content is created to help your readers it increases your sales. A beautiful transaction :) If you’re curious about the “proper structure” of an email, look here for inspiration.

Check out the full article for a nice case study and if you’re wanting even more stats, we’ve got ‘em.