E-mail marketing is still a winner when it comes to selling products and services. Consumers prefer e-mail communications to direct mail, social media, in store promotions and text messages, according to the latest figures.

A recent survey of shoppers across Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina and Ohio by CrossView revealed that almost 4 in 10 of them would elect to receive promotional information via e-mail.

E-mail turned out to be the most popular promotional communications channel amongst US consumers, followed by direct mail (23%), Text Messaging (18%), in store advertising (11%), social media (9%) with newspaper, TV and other traditional channels bringing up the rear with a total of just 3% between them.

Those are pretty telling statistics, and suggest strongly that investing in building a solid opt-in e-mail list and delivering compelling e-mail marketing on a regular basis is still a fantastic way for businesses to connect with consumers.

E-Mail Marketing tools for small businesses

When you’re just starting out it seems easy enough to manage your promotional e-mail using your desktop e-mail client, but that soon gets unwieldy. It’s also difficult to manage industry best practice and comply with anti—spam requirements like double-opt-in and unsubscribe requests.

To market effectively using e-mail you’re going to need dedicated e-mail marketing tools.

Do it yourself e-mail marketing tools

If you’re a LetsHost Complete hosting customer, you already have access to a great free e-mail list manager in your Fantastico script library. Just log in to your control panel, scroll down to Fantastico and look for PHP List.

You can install PHP List on your server for free, and use it to manage all of your e-mail lists and campaigns. Installation and setup is reasonably straightforward, but is a bit more involved than the hosted tools listed below.

You’ll find a detailed article on setting up and configuring PHP List on the webreference.com site.

Hosted e-mail marketing services

These are a great option for small businesses, because all of the technical stuff is taken care of for you. You simply create your account, fill in your details, and start managing your e-mail marketing campaigns.

E-mail services typically offer a free or very low cost trial, so you can try before you buy, and then charge an ongoing annual or monthly fee depending on the volume of e-mail you send in any given month.

Here are a few popular e-mail services you can try to help connect you with your existing customers and give your sales a boost:

Benchmark E-mail: an affordable, feature rich and easy-to-use  system that lets you start small and grows seamlessly with your business. Benchmark offers a free 30 day trial.

AWeber: the e-mail marketing and sequential auto-responder service of choice among many A-List internet marketers, AWeber has everything you need to seamlessly manage multiple e-mail marketing campaigns for your small business. You can sign up for an AWeber account for just $1.

NewsWeaver: Irish e-mail marketing services company NewsWeaver offers another very popular solution focussed on the distribution of high-quality e-mail newsletters, but with all the features necessary for managing comprehensive e-mail marketing campaigns. Newsweaver offers a 30 day free trial.

There are many other services out there, and most of them offer a “try before you buy” free trial.

So give e-mail marketing a whirl, it could be just the thing to boost your small business’s online sales.