Email Marketing
Reach your target public to create a
reach for your product or services
This is part of our
HIGH IMPACT, MULTI-CHANNEL RESPONSE PACKAGE
64% of users check their email regularly during
the day. 34% check it at least six times a day. - Gartner Report
Email marketing is, as the name
suggests, the use of email in marketing communications. The term covers
email you send to a customer or potential customer. In general, though,
it's used to refer to:
- Sending direct promotional emails
to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to
buy again
- Sending emails designed to
encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship
- Placing your marketing messages or
advertisements in emails sent by other people
You can think of these three main forms
of email marketing as the electronic equivalent of:
- Direct mail
- Sending people a print newsletter
- Placing advertisements in
subscription magazines and newspapers
There is, however, one extremely
important difference - the issue of permission. That is known as
"opt-in" which comes from someone who options to receive communication
from you. Responsible email marketing is based on the idea of
permission.
Essentially, you need an email address
owner's permission before you can send them a commercial email. If you
don't have this permission, then the recipients of your mail may well
regard your message as spam; unsolicited commercial
(bulk) email.
An example of permission is when your
customer buys something from your online store and also ticks a box
marked "please send me news about product updates via email". You now
have "permission" to send that person product updates by email, provided
you also give them the opportunity to rescind that permission at any
time.
Why is email marketing so popular?
Email marketing is so popular because:
- sending email is much cheaper than
most other forms of communication
- email lets you deliver your message
to the people (unlike a website, where the people have to come to
your message)
- email marketing has proven very
successful for those who do it right
Let's review the three types of email
marketing:
1. Direct email
Direct email involves sending a
promotional message in the form of an email. It might be an announcement
of a special offer, for example. Just as you might have a list of
customer or prospect postal addresses to send your promotions too, so
you can collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses.
You can also rent lists of email
addresses from service companies. They'll let you send your message to
their own address lists. These services can usually let you target your
message according to, for example, the interests or geographical
location of the owners of the email address.
2. Retention email
Instead of promotional email designed
only to encourage the recipient to take action (buy something, sign-up
for something, etc.), you might send out retention emails.
These usually take the form of regular
emails known as newsletters. A newsletter may carry promotional messages
or advertisements, but will aim at developing a long-term impact on the
readers. It should provide the readers with value, which means more than
just sales messages. It should contain information which informs,
entertains or otherwise benefits the readers.
3. Advertising in other people's emails
Instead of producing your own
newsletter, you can find newsletters published by others and pay them to
put your advertisement in the emails they send their subscribers.
Indeed, there are many email newsletters that are created for just this
purpose - to sell advertising space to others.
Email Marketing is part of our
HIGH IMPACT, MULTI-CHANNEL RESPONSE PACKAGE
|
