I'm sure by now you have heard "The Money is in the List"? Well I have been hearing that for 4 years since I started working online.

Yes I set up an email marketing with Mailchimp for free... but I never really focused on it or spent any time investigating it.

So recently I did and it is all starting to make sense to me now.

Why you should get cracking with email marketing:

1. You OWN your list.

Yes that's right. It doesn't belong to anyone else, it is yours. What happens if Facebook disappears overnight? Twitter? How about your entire website crashes and its gone? Perhaps Google decides to penalize you and you have no more organic visitors?

Now do you understand why owning a list is a good idea?

2. It needn't be expensive

Yes I advise you pay for a great autoresponder, but this needn't cost an arm and a leg. The cost per email sent to each subscriber is really very cheap.

3. Email marketing has a high conversion rate

You can build a relationship with your subscribers and sell to them over and over again once they trust you.

They gave you their email address so they are interested in what you have to say. They will engage directly with you.

4. You can personalize your messages and you can customize it exactly how you want it

Yes you can target your message to your readers. It is very different from social media where a message is just broadcast to anyone and everyone. You can send a personal message with your readers name to them.

You can also have different lists set up for different interests which means you can send highly targeted messages to your readers.

5. It is Measurable

You can see exactly what your readers are doing with your messages. If your message is not opened or not read you will know. If they unsubscribe you will also know.

If your reader opens it and clicks you will have this information at your fingertips.

6. It is Direct

Yes it goes straight to your reader. It won't for example be lost among the millions of other Facebook posts or Tweets. Your email go straight to your reader and wait in their inbox until they do something with it.

Yes, some will get caught in junkmail perhaps but not many.

Think about whether you will see a post on Facebook if the post is sent out today but you only go online again on Thursday... you will never see that, not a chance. But if you go online on Thursday chances are the first thing you will do is check your email!

7. It is actionable

When an email is received action is required and this is important. It is noticed because the recipient must do something with it. Even if the recipient doesn't want the message he or she must delete it, mark it as spam and/ or unsubscribe.

Or there is a positive action of the recipient opening it, reading it, clicking on a link, forwarding it to a friend, saving it in a folder....

And there is another bonus, your readers can save your message and come back to it many times again.