E-mail Marketing

As technology advanced and people devised of new ways for communication and information dissemination, e-mails became a wide-spread way of sharing knowledge and keeping in touch, among other things. In time marketers also reached out to include e-mails as a marketing medium in their arsenal for business growth and development. 

Thus, e-mail marketing evolved, and spread like wild fire. Globally, companies started marketing their offering to their target markets and potential customers via dropping in adverts in to their e-mail inboxes. E-mail marketing is a part of internet marketing, and comes under the umbrella of direct marketing. 

By e-mail marketing we mean: 

• Use of e-mails as a Customer Relationship Management tool for affiliate marketing; whereby, merchant wishes to maintain cordial relationships with current or potential customers, in order to instigate customer loyalty and repeat purchases. 
• Incorporating print and video advertisements in e-mails so as to attract the attention of customers and engage them. 
• E-mailing people with the purpose of new customer acquisition, and persuading current customers to make a purchase. 

Pros of E-mail Marketing: 

• The Return on Investment (ROI) generated via e-mail marketing is high and can be easily tracked. 
• Research has proven e-marketing to be the second most effective tool of internet marketing, preceded by Search Engine Marketing (SEM). 
• E-mail marketing has a wide-spread reach as you can send e-mails to your target market regardless of geographically dispersed it is. 
• It is a targeted internet marketing tool, where you can reach a considerable number of potential customers who have subscribed to your e-mail adverts via the opt-in option, to receive advertisements on subjects of their interest. 

Cons of E-mail Marketing: 

• Before starting e-mail marketing campaigns make sure that you are not violating the spam laws. It is imperative that you abide by laws such as CAN-SPAM. 
• Your e-mail might get filtered and end up in the junk folder which never gets read by most of the users. 
• The e-mail deliverability rate is not good and is a cause for constant concern for the internet marketing companies. With a deliverability percentage of 56% only, as 20% of e-mails get rejected and 8% get filtered, you can’t be sure if your e-mail reached the customer. 

Why Should You Do E-mail Marketing: 

• Building Customer Relationships: 

E-mail marketing can be used as an effective way of building long term customer relationships in order to generate brand loyalty and a lifetime of steady cash flows as a result of their purchases. 

• Increasing your Potential Customers: 

Large e-mail lists give the merchants leverage as they can market their product offerings to a huge number of people effortlessly. You easily send your e-mail across the world within a matter of seconds, and thereby, increase your potential customers. 

• Augmenting Sales Conversion: 

The more the e-mails you send, the higher your percentage of sales conversion because you get an opportunity to lure the customers to your website selling products or services by grabbing their attention. 

• Supporting Repeat Sales: 

By constantly keeping your target market updated on new product developments, upcoming sales, available discounts and other promotional material, you can start the cycle of repeat purchase as your products will be the first one that springs to mind. 

• Customer Feedback: 

For product improvements and generating insights e-mails can be very useful. You can send out mini questionnaires in e-mails, asking customers to respond with feedback. This way you will be able to determine your deficiencies and start overcoming to them. 

• Cost-effective Internet Marketing: 

Sending e-mail is much cheaper than other forms of internet advertising like Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, and the like. 

• Retention E-mails: 

You can send out regular newsletters, which have your promotions and advertisements so as to keep reminding the customers about your presence. The content of such e-mails should be relevant, informative and attractive. 

• Advertising in Other’s E-mails: 

There are hundreds of online newsletters which sell advertising space to companies who want to promote their products to a particular audience. These newsletters are then forwarded to a hue list of subscribers. You can always get your ads placed in one of them.