E-mail Marketing

As is quite apparent from the term, email marketing is about using email as a marketing tool to advertise or promote a brand, service, or product. In other words, it's a type of direct marketing, utilizing electronic mail as a way of conveying commercial messages to people. Although in its most comprehensive sense every e-mail that is sent to an existing or potential customer can be regarded as e-mail marketing, nevertheless, the term generally signifies the following:

• E-mails sent to promote the loyalty of the customer and to enhance the relationship between existing customers and the merchandizer.
• E-mails sent in order to get new customers or to convince current customers to purchase something again.
• Advertisements or marketing messages placed in the e-mails sent by other merchandizers.

Businesses are generally depend on referrals from current customers, utilize a subscription service, or pay an e-mail broker a fee to acquire the e-mail addresses of the customers they want to target with their e-mail marketing messages. Most companies, as expected, make use of a combination of the above methods.

What are the Advantages of E-mail Marketing?

There are several reasons for the popularity of e-mail marketing with businesses - here are some:

• One of the best advantages of e-mail marketing is the capability of distributing marketing message to large databases of possible customers relatively affordably. For example, when compared to investments in other media like printed newsletters or direct mail, it is much cheaper.
• E-mail marketing allows the advertiser to send the message to the targeted audience, unlike a website that must wait on the chance of the customers dropping by.
• Also, an e-mail marketing strategy can involve sending a number of e-mails successively, building on one another. For example, this method is often used for targeting specific dates that may be upcoming, like Christmas, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Valentine's Day, and so on.
• Unlike advertisements that are mailed, e-mail marketing messages are practically instantaneous. When an e-mail is sent, it arrives at its destination within seconds or minutes.
• The Return On Investment, or ROI, can be tracked accurately, and when done properly has proven to be highly effective. It is said that as an online marketing strategy, e-mail marketing is second only to search engine marketing.
• E-mail marketing efforts are easy to keep track of by using click-throughs, read-receipts, un-subscribes, bounce messages, web bugs, and so on, which can be used for assessing negative and positive responses, open rates, and correlating sales with marketing.
• E-mail marketing strategists have access to considerable numbers of e-mail subscribers who have consented, or opted in, to get the e-mails on subjects that they are interested in.
• Business is generated affordably as well as automatically.

So, What are the Disadvantages of E-mail Marketing?

• One of the main disadvantages of e-mail marketing is spam, which are unsolicited e-mails that are sent in bulk. This really hampers genuine e-mail marketing efforts, since the sheer bulk of spam e-mails can be such a put-off that people can often mistake genuine commercial e-mail, such as a mailing list that they may be subscribed to, for spam.
• Spam has led to users putting spam filters, which again has a negative effect on genuine marketers, because their commercial e-mails often get filtered out by these spam filters.
• Apart from spam, another drawback is the sheer volume of commercial e-mail that people get in a day, so much so, it can often result in them deleting them without even a glance.

The advent of e-mail marketing has transformed the way business is done. Sure, there are some disadvantages, even so, it must be said that the impact e-mail marketing has had on business is largely positive, having a clear edge over other types of marketing communication. Hence, e-mail marketing is here to stay for a long time indeed.