At the moment, I am on a plane heading back from a week long excursion to Las Vegas.

My entire body hurts, my liver may never forgive me, and many of the moments of the past week are very hazy. But, one thing I did take note of and somehow manage to remember, is that every place I went to in Sin City asked for my email address.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that has been to Vegas that in addition to being a gambling Mecca, it is also a marketing machine. Amongst all the lights, glitz and glamour, every patron to my favourite city on earth is exposed to more marketing impressions than you could ever imagine. Every square inch of the city that can be advertising something, is advertising something!

So, it’s no wonder that the town seems to have jumped at the opportunity to aggressively use email marketing.

When signing up for my players card at the various hotels (YAY, getting comp’ed!), I assured myself of getting weekly emails inviting me back to their properties with various incentives.

Whenever my wife or I made a purchase at a store, we assured ourselves of getting email catalogues right to our inbox.

With the economy the way it is, and Vegas really getting hit hard (although I did many plenty of donations to their economy!) email marketing is a great way for all these businesses to market effectively and affordably.

After all, it may not be financially feasible for every one of these stores to spend tons of money printing catalogues, flyers and other promotional material to mail it out to everyone that has ever shopped at their store. But, with email messages costing a fraction of a penny, the sky is the limit, which is a marketers dream.

I should note that not everyone has adopted email marketing. I did head to a strip club with some buddies and not one stripper asked for my email address…maybe they’ll get on the bandwagon soon! =)