Email Marketing
There are many e-mail software programs and online e-mail services available to help deliver your message to potential customers. Let us help you find the right solution for your advertising campaign and put together an effective and attractive marketing e-mail piece.
NewSum Business Consulting is not affiliated with nor receives compensation from any producer or vendor of e-mail software or online e-mail program so any recommendation or implementation is explicitly based on what works best for you.
Ten reasons E-mail Marketing is popular with both large companies and small businesses:
Advantages:
1) A mailing list provides the ability to distribute information to a target group of potential customers on subjects of interest to them..
2) Compared to other media investments such as direct mail or printed newsletters, e-mail is quite inexpensive.
3) Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.
4) The delivery time for an e-mail message is short (i.e., seconds or minutes) as compared to a mailed advertisement (several days or more).
5) An advertiser is able to deliver the message to its audience, as opposed to website-based advertising, which relies on a customer to visit that website.
6) E-mail messages are easy to track. An advertiser can track users via autoresponders, bounce messages, unsubscribe requests, read receipts, click-throughs, etc. These methods can be used to measure open rates, responses and correlate sales with marketing.
7) E-mail marketers can generate repeat business affordably and automatically.
8) An exact return on investment can be tracked and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.
9) E-mail marketing is paper-free - environmentally friendly or green.
10) Tracking and response metrics enable fine-tuning of the E-mail marketing process by testing different variables and statistical analysis of results.
Opt-in e-mail advertising
Opt-in e-mail advertising, or permission marketing, is a method of e-mail advertising through which the e-mail recipient has agreed to receive these communications.
A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to a business's existing customers. Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events, promotions or new products. In this type of marketing communication a company wanting to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the original point of purchase if they would like to subscribe to the newsletter.
Disadvantages
Many companies communicate legitimately with existing customers via e-mail, but other unscrupulous companies send unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) and even e-mails designed to scam unsuspecting readers.
The enormous volume of spam can lead some users to mistake legitimate commercial e-mail for spam. Spammers often attempt to represent themselves as legitimate operators and confusion may arise when spam messages are designed to have a similar appearance or name as legitimate advertisors.
Due to this volume of spam e-mail on the Internet, spam filters are essential to most users. Some marketers report that legitimate commercial e-mail messages are frequently intercepted by spam filters. Even if you are not spamming, sometimes your e-mail can be considered as apam anyway. So it can be deleted or moved into the spam folder of the recipient's e-mail reader.
One effective technique used by established email marketing companies is to require what is known as the "double opt-in" method of requiring a potential recipient to manually confirm their request for information by clicking a unique link which includes a unique identification code to confirm that the owner of the recipient email address has indeed requested the information. Responsible e-mail marketing and autoresponder companies use this double opt-in method to confirm each request before any information is sent out.
Bottom Line
Inexpensive, targeted, measurable ... give email marketing a try today and start bringing in new customers and receiving more repeat business from your existing customers.
