Email advertising is one of the most effective tools of marketing that is popularly implemented by many enterprises in the world to promote their products and services to their customers. It offers both advantages and disadvantages that need to be carefully examined before being applied.

One of major disadvantages of email advertising is that the emails sent to customers may be regarded as spam. In these computerized days, internet users usually receive unsolicited emails which make them confused and angry. It is difficult for them to distinguish what email is spam and what email is genuine. Because they are bombarded with spam emails everyday, they might view the email marketing as spam also and delete all of them immediately without looking through.

In many cases, these "innocent" emails are automatically transferred to spam folders, hindering the effectiveness of email advertising. This is a serious problem that most of marketers have to face with since it makes the advertisements are not exposed to their target customers, preventing the companies from promoting new products and services to the clients. This also advantageous to the consumers who can not access to the product information that they have registered to receive from the companies because they can not recognize the email senders.

Moreover, when email advertising is viewed as spam, recipients are likely to send complaints to the enterprises because of the inconvenience and annoyance that they have to suffer from. This situation will negatively influence the companies' reputation, reducing the return and competitiveness in the market.

Countering this disadvantage, email advertising brings many advantages that are attractive to the marketers. Firstly, it is cost effective since it requires much less financial investment compared with other marketing tools. Advertising on television, on newspaper and other media are mostly more expensive, which accounts for a larger portion of marketing budget or sometimes exceed the managers' estimation.

Email advertising allows business owners to minimize associated costs. The duty of marketers becomes simpler by sending emails to all the customers via their email addresses. The cost of sending messages is quite small, which is considered part of periodic operating costs. Secondly, email advertising assist marketers to focus on target customers or markets. It enables companies to directly reach potential buyers, grab their attention and build customer loyalty. Marketers can completely control this thanks to the recipient lists that have been already built. With a few hours of sending out a message, companies can successfully distribute their product information to the potential consumers who are willing to view the advertisements and have high demand for the products.

Potential consumers is often segmented by age, gender, social status and other demographic and economic factors, basing on which enterprises will plan and execute appropriate advertising campaigns. Enterprises are able to evaluate the success level of their marketing strategy by counting the click through to see the total number of visitors or visiting times. Based on this evaluation, the business operators will be able to adjust or make timely correction for the faulty strategy, which can hardly be done in the offline world.

To sum up, email advertising has proved to be a successful way of reaching audience all over the world compared to other traditional marketing types. It is essential for every business owner to cautiously and carefully examine its pros and cons to maximize the advantages and minimize the drawbacks.