What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a tool for promoting products or services through email messages.
In general, email marketing consists of sending messages to customers, prospective customers, or members of some community. There are three kinds of email marketing:
- Sending emails to attract new customers or convince existing ones to buy your product again (direct advertizing);
- Sending emails to increase the loyalty of existing customers (reinforcement advertising);
- Placing your advertisements in email messages sent by other people.
Email marketing is very similar to conventional marketing, such as:
- Selling goods through mail order;
- Direct mailing of brochures, magazines, or newspapers;
- Placing advertisements in magazines or newspapers.
However, there is an important difference. (I’ll tell you more about it later.)
Why Email Marketing is so Popular?
Email marketing is very popular for the following reasons:
- Electronic mailing is much cheaper than other kinds of advertising;
- Email lets you deliver information directly to your customers;
- Email marketing can be very effective if the right approach is used.
Let’s take a look at three types of email marketing:
1. Direct Email Marketing
Direct email marketing consists of sending email messages. For example, you can send an announcement about a special offer (discount). You can use your own list of email addresses of your customers or buy an email list at a special web portal. The acquired email lists can help you extend your customer base. By sending messages to you customers, you can stimulate them to make repeat purchases. You can also lease email lists from companies that allow others to send messages to addresses on their lists. Besides, you can select email addresses for sending your messages by using such criteria as the user’s geographic location.
2. Reinforcement Electronic Mailing
You can use email messages to retain your regular customers (instead of using email marketing to stimulate the recipient to do something). Electronic newsletters sent on a regular basis are mostly used for that purpose. Though newsletters may contain promotional materials or advertisements, they should focus on establishing long-term relations with the customer. Therefore, such newsletters must not only contain commercial information but also inform and entertain the reader.
3. Advertisements in Other People’s Direct Emails
Instead of making and supporting your own electronic mailing list, you may want to find other people willing to take your money and place your ads in their direct emails. Actually, there is a huge number of electronic mailing lists created exactly for that purpose — selling advertisement spots.
Problems of Email Marketing
In practice, it’s not that simple, beginning from the complexity of creating a good message and ending with distribution of the message to your target audience. You must also persuade the recipients to read your message and to take some action. To do that, you have to measure and analyze the results. And the most important problem is that of legitimacy (also known as the “spam problem”).
In fact, you must obtain an email address owner’s consent to receiving your messages before you start sending your commercial emails to that address. If you don’t have such consent, the recipients of your emails may consider them as spam.
If you are accused of sending spam, your email address may be blocked and your website may be added to the black list (or even totally banned). As a result, your reputation may suffer. In some countries, you even may be prosecuted. Therefore, you should always ask your potential subscribers for their consent to receiving your messages.
It’s very important that everyone who is going to use email marketing considers the issues of legality and spam.
