For many websites one of the mot effective ways to engage your web traffic is to offer an email newsletter. The newsletter is a great tool for anyone who wants to tap into the potential of their website. It offers the website owner a number of unique benefits and should be viewed as almost a must have. Below are five reasons you need to include an email newsletter as part of your marketing plan.

1. The List - When you offer an email newsletter, you will be collecting email addresses from people. These people will become "your list". The benefit of the list is that you now have direct access to people who are obviously interested in your website.

2. Gives you a reason to contact people - Everyone hates unsolicited email, at least most of us anyways. An email newsletter gives you a reason to contact these people. They signed up for the newsletter so they can't be surprised when it shows up in their inbox. Not only do you have a list of interested people, you also have a perfectly legit reason to contact them.

3. Keeps people engaged - If you are sending out a regular email newsletter you will be keeping people engaged. Your website, offer or you will be on their minds regularly. While some people might forget about a website they visited, even if they like it, your newsletter recipients will never forget. It is a great way to keep potential leads engaged.

4. Brands you as an expert - If you are offering helpful hints, how-to's or even current industry news in your newsletter, you can brand yourself as an expert. Imagine if a person was looking for a real estate agent. They have to make a choice, and for the past year, every month they have gotten a newsletter from a local real estate agent. The newsletter has been full of helpful tips and news. Who do you think the first person they are going to call is? Good chance it is the guy who they now feel is an expert.

5. Viral opportunity - As your list grows your newsletter will be seen by more and more people. The benefit to this, is more people who can share your newsletter. Email makes it very easy to share information. If you have a thousand people on your list and those people are forwarding your newsletter, you could see a big spike in web traffic. Not every newsletter will go viral, but the larger the list you have, the better chance you have of people sharing it. You could be sending your newsletter to 100 people, but many more could actually be seeing it.

A lot of people think that SEO is the end all and be all of inbound marketing. Yes, search engine optimization is a great way to "get found" but an email newsletter has it's own unique set of benefits. You are essentially creating a list of warm leads with a built-in excuse to contact them. You also brand yourself as an expert in the same step. Any person or business who is seriously devoted to marketing themselves online, needs to include an email newsletter as part of their plan.