Every business wants to be the first thing on a customer's mind when he or she has a problem in that company's area of expertise.

How can email marketing help you make it happen?

Determining the proper balance in any marketing budget is a complicated exercise. You must weigh the benefits of all major marketing options against one another, taking into account how much you have to spend.

How much of your marketing budget should be devoted to email marketing?

Everyone knows email marketing is cheap. Constant Contact's first tier of service starts at $15.00/month, for an unlimited number of email messages sent to 500 or fewer recipients.

If the monthly cost is all you understand about the economics of email marketing, however, then you are missing out on the best part.

Marketing to existing customers is much easier, and much less expensive, than marketing to new prospects. Fortunately, existing customers are also much more likely to provide new revenue.

To make this happen, you must stay in front of existing customers, so that you can turn them into repeat customers.

The reason you prospect is to gain new customers--and a prospect only becomes a customer when he or she chooses to buy something from you.

How do you make that first sale? How do you turn a prospect into a customer--and how can email marketing help?