Forget direct email marketing for a second, and tell me if this has ever happened to you.

That's where direct email marketing comes in. Forget spam.

Here's the beauty of direct email marketing.

What's more is you'll still get access to the most advanced functionality.

Information is power, and direct email marketing is one of the most effective ways to gather that information and put it to good use.

But then, in the middle of it all, you see an envelope from your favourite restaurant. "Thanks for being a loyal customer, it says. Next time you come by, let us treat you to a free dessert.And guess what? Millions of you check your email more often than your actual mailboxes.Spam's just the phoneyand direct email marketing is miles away from that.Let's go back to that coupon you received from your favourite restaurant, and let's think about it from the restaurant's point of view. However, to get that coupon into your hands, the restaurant had to pay for printing, buy and stuff envelopes, address them to you and then pay for postage.The emails are all pre-designed, and the back-end is already taken care of for you. And as small business owners have begun to discover the power of email, many direct email marketing programs are now built for non-technical folk.We've just sent a Free Dessert email coupon to all the customers who filled out our customer satisfaction survey and gave us their email addresses.We can see exactly who opened our messages, and when they did it.We can group all our readers who forwarded their coupons to a friend and offer them an extra incentive (We know they like to tell their friends about us, so why not offerOff when they bring in two or more friends?).Think about how much information he's missing out on, and think about how much better things would be if he sent that flyer through direct email marketing.