The Internet has opened up new vistas as far as business opportunities and promotion are concerned. Marketing through e-mails is one of the most favored trends in advertising and promotion. For relatively small-scale businesses, the promotion of their product or services using the direct mail advertising strategy is proving its worth considerably.

How do you overcome the problem of having your direct mails labeled junk mail and trashed directly by receivers? Most servers now provide the facility of reporting the mailer as junk or spam and thus the received mail is deleted directly without bothering the receiver. Despite the knowledge of a lot of people's response to direct promotion mails, companies still send them e-mails because, all said and done, this does prove a successful part of the marketing strategy. Most of the people dump junk mails as soon as they find them, without even bothering to take a look, but often people read the mails, even if it's a overview, if they find it attractive. Sometimes the recipients even respond to the mail and then look forward for more communication. This results in the success of the cause. To be serving the cause, the promotion mails must grab the interest and attention of the viewer at the very first sight

Market trends and various studies have reiterated that the more people are presented with the advertisement of a product, the more they are inclined to buy it. Even a commercial advertisement, be it print media or television, has to be presented numerous times to the target users, before they are compelled to buy it. The same rules apply to direct mail marketing strategies. The mails must be sent to a group of targeted people or the potential consumers of the services. Even if a ratio of them is not in need of the services or products, some of them may respond to the advertisement due to curiosity or seeking a change. Yet, the market trend statistics has shown that despite the floating of millions of direct mails by big organizations, the average response rate for direct mailing is less than 1%. Considering this data, a small or medium sized business needs to keep their mails crisp, personal and attractive to gather response from recipients.

The key to success in a mailing marketing campaign is to follow the set of guidelines strictly. First of all the target consumer of the product or services sold by company needs to be visualized. The target people constitute the mailing list. The mailing list is built on the lists of contacts from business or personal networking, call center data, current customer's references, business surveys, etc. Apart from building an exclusive mailing list data for the company, many organizations consider buying or renting a mailing list from authorized suppliers. The businesses selling the target consumer lists filter the data based on their occupation, salary, zip or postal code, age group, gender, special interests etc. This data must again be filtered by the marketing division of the company and then a strategy should be devised to mail to the list of people to gain the maximum profit.

The mail drafted for the people in the list should portray the most appealing features of the product of the company. Also the target people must be able to connect to the services of the company. The content of the mail must be easily understandable and believable for the consumers. The mail should not be open ended. It should prompt the user into the required necessary actions. The receiver of the mail should not be left wondering his course of action, if he is interested in the mentioned services. The mail must state clearly the contact phone number of the company and have a pre-paid reply coupon or an order form.