E-mail marketing is one of the direct tools used in Internet marketing wherein an email is used to communicate with the target or potential audience through a marketing message. While e-mail marketing is a rather broad and extensive term, it encompasses e-mails sent to foster customer loyalty and repeat business by reminding the customer of an existing or previous relationship. E-mails sent with the purpose of targeting new customers or to encourage customers to purchase the product also fall within this category.

E-mail marketing as a core marketing tool is widely appreciated and used both by online based businesses and those offline. The ability to keep costs under control while having a substantial list of customers to whom marketing information and product messages can be conveyed usually is the best way to go especially for small businesses, who can ill afford the much more expensive but otherwise conventional marketing tools such as newsletters, TV/Radio Ads, individually addressed mail etc. With email marketing, it’s now possible – and let’s not forget financially comfortable- to follow up and establish the exact return on investment – known as ‘track to basket’.

Delivering an email is quite easy and quick compared to posting a marketing message to recipients on your list. While click-based advertising on websites needs a potential customer to show an initial interest (by clicking on such ads), e-mail marketing allows the marketer to direct the message at the customer who hasn’t heard of the product or service. This falls under the category of push-based marketing. E-mails also allow the option of being tracked through means such as notifications for bounced or failed messages, auto responders, read receipts, and rates of click through.

E-mail marketing allows generation of repeat business without much hassle. Several people may also opt for e-mail messages to reach them, thus providing room for a wider base of targeted subscribers. The prevalence of e-mail and its popularity has also driven growth in this marketing tool segment. Receivers have an option of customizing the messages received according to their taste or personal interests. By being paper-free, e-mail marketing appeals to the environmentally conscious consumers as well.

However a widespread problem of spamming also dampens the consumers’ interest in e-mail messages and adversely affects the impact a marketer could have attracting customers on a marketing campaign. Messages risk being lost in the sea of spam. People often tend to ignore unsolicited emails as it is hard for them to differentiate between legitimate e-mail and spam. Spammers represent themselves as legitimate businesses thus impacting the reputation of real businesses.

Opt-in e-mail advertising is when the receiver gives consent to receive the marketing messages. This helps overcome the hurdle posed by spam and spam filters. This establishes a trust based interaction between the marketer and the potential customer. As the message is anticipated, its reception will be better as will be the response to it. Businesses now exercise the “double opt-in” option, wherein the receiver must confirm their request for receipt of marketing messages by following a unique link and entering special codes – This ensures reliability in the process as spam filters often block e-mail messages from even from the legitimate commercial businesses.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Online Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.