Email Inspiration: Why You Can't Afford Not to Use Email

By Susan Brown Faghani
Manager, Marketing and Sales Communication, L-Soft

• Alerting residents to a local weather or security emergency
• Fostering cross-national research collaboration
• Helping customers by sharing personalized tips and support
• Serving as the go-to resource for an entire profession
• Connecting people with cancer with lifesaving treatments

Is there anything that email lists can't do?

With approximately 2.5 billion email users around the world, email enables us to have a much wider reach than any social media. And email offers the flexibility for one-way and two-way communication, everything from newsletters and announcements to discussion lists and online communities. Simply put, email is the most indispensable communication tool available.

Because email is the top activity of people online, research consistently shows that it's also the preferred channel for marketing messages and the most effective tool for acquiring customers and selling your products. Email allows you to get the richest data about your recipients and to use those powerful analytics to boost your results.

Email discussion communities and customer forums provide for deeper discussion and searchable archives with valuable information that subscribers appreciate. Email is woven into our daily lives – both professional and personal – in a way that social media and other online activities just cannot match.

Organizations simply can't afford not to use email. Whether you're already actively using email lists as a communication tool, looking to broaden your email initiatives or starting from scratch, here are some resources that provide a sampling of the very specific ways that you can use email to achieve your organization's goals, increase revenue and better serve your customers or constituents. While focused on two specific sectors, each map provides inspiration that can be easily applied to other sectors.

Interactive Maps for Inspiration

View interactive map spotlighting education:
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv_on_campus.asp

View interactive map spotlighting government:
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv_citygov.asp

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