Jan6Written by:Jacques van der Hoven
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:43:00 GMT 
Intended Audience: Communications Managers, public relations officers, marketing personnel and business owners.
E-marketing Synonyms: Online marketing, web marketing, internet marketing, website marketing, search engine marketing, search engine advertising, e-communication.
What is E-mail Marketing?
E-mail marketing refers to the highly effective use of e-mail as the delivery mechanism for your marketing communications. More specifically it is the use of e-mail to communicate with your customers about your products, services, promotions, events, specials, etc. with the intent of increasing your sales or improving customer loyalty.
Do We Need to Make Use of E-mail Marketing and Why?
We are all aware of the link between marketing and sales and the need to market one’s products in order to get them sold. If you agree that marketing is an essential part of any business then the next question is “Why e-mail marketing? “.
Simply put, it works! Research in 2007/2008 showed significant return on investment generated from e-mail marketing efforts. It was also established that e-mail marketing was the second lowest cost per order for online marketing. Trends indicate that not only was there significant budgets dedicated to e-mail marketing by small, medium and large organizations, but that 2009/2010 would see these figures grow substantially. What this means is that companies of varying sizes are spending money on e-mail marketing and getting the expected results, sales!
The Different Forms of E-mail Marketing
You ought to think of every single e-mail you send to your customers as a form of e-mail marketing, but for the formal definition there are three main types of e-mail marketing:
Direct E-mail
Here, the objective is to attract new customers or to persuade existing customers to purchase other products or services.
Customer Retention E-mail
Retaining customers, or customer loyalty, can be improved by sending e-mails to your existing customers offering exclusive deals or valuable information or some form of interaction that is initiated by the e-mail.
Advertising in other People’s E-mails
Instead of producing your own newsletters you could alternatively find newsletters published by relevant entities and pay them for advertising space in their newsletter.
What are the Advantages of E-mail Marketing?
E-mail marketing is popular for several reasons:
- Compared to traditional media investments, e-mail marketing is less expensive
- Activity and return on investment can be tracked
- The marketing message is delivered much faster than traditional methods
- Advertisers can generate cost effective repeat business
- Reaching a larger audience at a lower cost is easily achievable
What are the Disadvantages Associated with E-mail Marketing?
The primary disadvantage of using e-mail marketing is SPAM, or unsolicited e-mail. This is basically the practice of bombarding inboxes with untargeted e-mail usually perpetuated by the buying and selling of e-mail lists or databases.
Many countries have implemented laws regarding the sending of bulk mail covering such concepts as Opt-out, which means you must provide the reader with the ability to click on a link in the e-mail which will remove them from the mailing list.
There are many aspects of the laws surrounding unsolicited e-mail, but I’ll leave that for another day. The point to be made here is that with the proliferation of SPAM, antidotes were quickly invented and are constantly improved to remove unwanted e-mail from inboxes. So there is the chance that your organization’s well intended, solicited e-mail will end up in SPAM folders rather than inboxes, but with the correct techniques this situation can be avoided.
Where to Begin
For the price conscious reader you might consider committing to a simple newsletter to be delivered at regular intervals, monthly for example. Your newsletter should cover topics that are of interest to your customers balanced with your need for sales. So if you have a hardware store with a sale scheduled for next month on specific types of equipment you may include the basic details of the sale in this month’s newsletter. How much detail you include in the newsletter is dependent on whether or not you have a website that covers the topic in more detail. Readers generally get bored very easily so too much reading could put them off, but a well designed graphic could do the trick. With your own website providing all the details of the sale you could provide hyperlinks in your e-mail pointing them to the pages on your website that provide the details of the sale. This is an attractive option, because the traffic to your website will aid in establishing the success of your e-mail marketing efforts. If, however, you do not have a website the recommended approach is to provide the reader with enough detail to entice them to visit the store for the sale. That said, it has to be reiterated that readers get bored easily so be cautious not to overload the e-mail and the reader. All of this can be done with a simple e-mail program like Outlook or Thunderbird.
There are a number of obstacles that should be considered such as the readability of the e-mail, the compatibility issues that exist between different e-mail readers, e-mail delivery and read receipt statistics, etc., but for these considerations we recommend either using a professional service or buying a very good book on the subject.
If you would like to find out more about what we offer, read through our E-marketing section or contact us using the form below.