If you run a business, a website or a blog and you want to increase your audience as well as increasing engagement, then the single most effective way to do that is with email marketing.

If you listen to pretty much any top marketer, then they will almost always tell you this. They will almost always say that the most important aspect of their marketing – the thing that led to their success was email.

And there's a very good reason for this. Or ten

Email marketing allows you to reach your audience in an incredibly direct manner.

Unlike other forms of marketing, you’ll actually be able to reach your audience directly in their inboxes without having to go through any third party.

That means that you’re not reliant on a platform like Facebook or Twitter, or at the mercy of potential changes to policies that could render your messages unheard.

It wasn’t that long ago that Facebook made the decision to change its system so that only a small percentage of posts from pages got through to followers.

With email, your messages are going directly to the users. That means that nothing can prevent you from reaching them and you know that 100% of everything you send is going to reach the recipient.

It means that you don't lose your long list of subscribers if Facebook decides to inexplicably delete your account (this happen in fact it has happened to me) or if they decide to delete their accounts.

This is a relationship that is directly between you and the subscribers. But that’s only touching the very surface of what makes Email marketing so useful.