I have always tended to believe that I sent an email out to my lists, and people either read it or deleted it right away. Those that read it either acted on my recommendations and clicked through to a link or they did not. But through a new email management tool, I am learning that an email campaign has a much longer life than I ever expected. In the world of print collateral or publishing, we talk about "shelf life." This term refers to how long a printed piece will have an impact. For instance, an article in a magazine makes a particularly compelling argument for a new product or service or methodology for marketing. Readers retain this article for future reference -- in fact, they may reread it many times. Or they may even pass it on to their peers. And while they may not act on the recommendations within the article and make a purchase immediately, they may actually make a purchase at some future day. In a recent email campaign I was able to track the number of times the email was opened, clicked through and forwarded. How valuable this was. I could see the status of every email right down to the individual contact on my email list. Amazing. And very insightful. Not just because I had a real-time view of the activity, but because I was finally able to see that the life of an email campaign extends much further than the initial blast.  Many people did not open the email upon first receipt. Either because the day of the week was busy, or they were out of the office, or they simply did not have the time. The campaign is already one week old, and people are still opening the email. I can also see that many people tend to save emails and reread them. If they are very interested in my message, they clickthrough the embedded link and read the respective web page. And if they are truly interested in my message, they forward it to their friends for further investigation and discussion. I've seen evidence of this myself. I may receive an email about a product I mentioned months ago, or suddenly an affiliate commission pops up for a product that I have not mentioned in weeks. This is all related to the life of an email campaign. Now you can manage your email campaigns better than before and gain insight into their success or failure at a very granular level. Armed with this new marketing data, you can position your future email marketing campaigns for higher penetration and conversion. Once you create a FREE trial account with Constant Contact, you upload your email addresses, and select the look and feel of your newsletter. It creates both HTML and text versions without you having to know a thing about HTML programming or web page design!. After you setup your newsletters, you enter the contents of your various articles, ads, and you can pick the fonts, size, colors, etc. You have a lot of control over the look and feel. You can even upload and add your own logo to give it a branded look and feel. After the campaign is sent, you can check the ongoing results through Constant Contact's real-time statistics. You can see the quantity of emails sent, opened, bounced, and the click-throughs, and you can even compare the results of the campaign to others. Click the banner below for more information about Constant Contact.