Years ago many businesses might have claimed that sending out paper flyers to their customers was a highly effective form of advertising. Just about every consumer can recall seeing their mailbox stuffed with flyers or having a flyer tacked onto their windshield. Some people might have read these flyers while others quickly cast them aside. But from the business' point of view, enough people read (and often acted upon them) to make it an effective platform for spreading their message. The traditional paper flyer's time in the limelight as a viable and effective marketing vehicle has, for all intensive purposes, come to an end. Paper flyers have been replaced by a new, environmentally friendly and far more effective platform.

Most businesses have made the switch to email flyers. Here are just some of the reasons why.

Most businesses have come to realize that, with email flyers, there is no need to hire an expensive designer and no need to incur costly printing fees. Since most email flyer programs let the actual business owner, manager, or marketing team simply point-and-click their way to a professional eye-catching email flyer, the costs are significantly lower. This also heavily decreases the amount of lead time needed to launch an email flyer campaign. In the past, the business owner would have needed to factor in all the design, printing and distribution time. Now with email flyers, that is all cut down to a matter of minutes. Just about every business operator will tell you that time is amongst the scarcest resources they have, so the fact that email flyers alleviate that big time sink of traditional paper flyers is a big benefit.

Email flyers also help extend the businesses messages, due to the viral nature of email. Most email flyer programs will have a 'forward to friend' option that further encourages the spreading of the email. With traditional paper flyers, there is practically zero forwarding of the message at all. How many people do you think get a flyer stuffed in their mailbox and think "You know what, I'm going to photocopy this and pass it out to my friends at work!" I can guarantee you not many! But, with the power of email, anyone who receives your email flyer can easily use the special 'forward to friend' option embedded in the content, or they can simply click the forward button on their email program. In either case, more people are seeing your message. In addition, since your email flyer is being passed along to someone's friend or associate, it instantly gains even more credibility.

While traditional paper flyers leave the business owner flying blind in terms of results, email flyers completely alleviate this shortcoming and put tons of information at your fingertips. When you send out an email flyer, you can track all aspects of its progress and success. You can see the exact percentage of people who have opened your email flyer, and even drill down to know exactly which contacts opened the email (and even what time they opened it!). With email flyers you can also track exactly who is clicking on links included in your content, and also who is forwarding your message to their friends. With this information readily available, business owners can make important decisions on how to improve their promotional campaigns. They'll know exactly what adjustments to make to so their email flyers can be even more effective. Compare this with the "send out paper flyers, cross your fingers and hope for the best" approach, and it's clear just why so many businesses are now harnessing the power of email flyers and email marketing.

While the benefits of email flyers over traditional paper flyers go on and on, one issue worth mentioning is that email flyers are a lot more environmentally friendly. With an overall push by global forces to treat our environment better, it's clear that sending out digital email flyers that produce no waste is far better for the environment than printing thousands and thousands of paper flyers. Even if we all hope that those paper flyers will be recycled, we know that ultimately not all of them will end up in a blue box. That means they have to end up somewhere and that may be the trash or it may be litter on our streets. No matter where it ends up, it's clear that Mother Nature wouldn't be too happy. With email flyers, there is no waste and no litter. Many larger organizations, particularly in the USA, have switched to email flyers to be more environmentally conscious. As you can see tough, that's just one of the benefits of email flyers.

There is no doubt that email flyers are the evolution of paper flyers and have a plethora of added benefits. Email flyers consistently prove more effective to businesses and ultimately yield a greater return on investment. With more businesses latching onto email flyers, we can all expect to see less paper flyers landing in our mailbox and more email flyers landing in our inbox.