Opt-in email marketing provides the highest ROI and conversion rate of any online marketing method.
Twitter and Facebook may be cool, but the guys sending emails to their lists control the message and are the ones making the big bucks.
I sell about $100 worth of software for every ten people I can convince to click on a link in an email. That number astounds me. I hope to do more with it next year.
To expand, that means that if a user's average lifetime clicks is .5, an email sign up is worth $50 in eventual revenue.
I have worked with clients (retailers) on their numbers and found that a subscription (pen, paper and a person asking a couple of questions) is worth more than a sale.