Email Marketing

E-mail marketing as the name suggests is a form of direct marketing making use of email. Technically speaking, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term email marketing usually refers to one of the following:

• emails sent for the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a company with its current or previous customers, thereby enhancing customer loyalty and repeat business
• sending email for the purposes of acquiring new customers or to entice current customers to purchase something immediately

Advantages

Email marketing is popular with companies for a number of reasons:

* An exact return on investment can be tracked and has proven to be highly effective when done properly. Email marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.
* Advertisers can reach large numbers of email subscribers who have opted in (i.e., consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.
* Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.
* Email is popular with digital marketers, rising an estimated 15% in 2009.
* Email allows marketers to reach out to consumers with personalized, relevant, dynamic messages.
* Transactional emails allow businesses to respond automatically to important consumer events like purchases or shop-cart abandonment.

Disadvantages

A report issued by the email services company Return Path, as of mid-2008 e-mail deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. According to the report, legitimate email servers averaged a delivery rate of 56% with twenty percent of the messages being rejected, and an additional eight percent were filtered.

Companies considering the use of an email marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States’ Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM), the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, or their Internet service provider’s acceptable use policy.

While this can be a challenging task for many companies that are attempting to manage their email marketing campaigns themselves, for users of commercially available products such as Constant Contact, Aweber or Swiftpage Email you should have no problem. The primary advantage is having a reputable company assisting you to ensure your success.

Opt-in email advertising

Opt-in email advertising, or permission marketing, is a method of advertising via email whereby the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. This method is one of several developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of email marketing.

Opt-in email marketing may evolve into a technology that uses a handshake protocol between the sender and receiver. This system is intended to eventually result in a high degree of satisfaction between consumers and marketers. If opt-in email advertising is used, the material that is emailed to consumers will be “anticipated”. It is assumed that the consumer wants to receive it, which makes it unlike unsolicited advertisements sent to the consumer. Ideally, opt-in email advertisements will be more personal and relevant to the consumer than un-targeted advertisements.

A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm’s customers. Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events or promotions, or new products. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter.

With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in their database, marketers can send out promotional materials automatically — known as Drip Marketing. They can also segment their promotions to specific market segments.