What Is Email Marketing?
Before social media marketing dominated internet marketing, email marketing was the most preferred strategy of businesses for sending their campaigns to their prospective markets. It was so widely practiced back them that email users became so wary of such promotional contents and considered excessive use of such strategy as violation of their rights. “Spam” practically became a term for unsolicited marketing campaigns and other form of promotional materials, which ironic, given that advertisements in general are unsolicited to begin with.
Today, email marketing is still being used by businesses as part of their sales and promotional efforts, albeit now with stricter ethical rules and precautionary measures to avoid being labeled as violating and subsequently flagged as illegal and unethical. This is done by getting the email recipients to agree with terms and officially allow automated senders to forward emails to them without legal impediments and technical loopholes. Nonetheless, there are still a lot of unethical email marketing campaigns mostly done by illegal businesses and scammers. Fortunately, email providers now employ stricter screening processes for all incoming messages, some of which utilize security and trust certificates of senders as primary qualification for acceptance.
Using email marketing is somehow risky because it already has a negative connotation; thus, its credibility is already on the balance, and that can tip over anytime. However, when done properly and executed excellently, its potential for success is enormous.
As a type of direct marketing strategy, the success rate of email marketing can be higher compared to most internet marketing strategies as the recipients are all targeted and can be specifically picked. Basically, targeted marketing leads to more favorable results, results to more instant feedbacks and converts into higher sales. If you have very specific marketing leads in hand, as in the case of existing customers and past prospects, there is no better way of reaching out to then than through email marketing.
Traditionally, the emails used in email marketing can involve actual contents and attachments or merely backlinks to the sender’s website (although this is a practice mostly used by scammers or produces by malwares). However, the most common way of using it is as a conduit for promotional updates and not as the primary material itself for marketing campaigns. Instead of using is to send advertisements and press releases, it can be more effective if it will be used to announce updates, such as new items on sales, new webpages and changes in systems, rather than present the updates as an email. This also gives recipients the free will to choose whether they will check out the updates or not.
For message-driven email contents, it can be a great means to appeal to certain recipients for a sincere action, such as solicitation for donations, feedbacks, surveys and confirmations for transactions done in the past with possibility of continuation in the future. Email marketing is also perfect for business proposals and sales presentations.
In reality, there is really no need to have direct business motives when using this marketing strategy because it is also perfect for awareness campaigns, straight information dissemination and constant communication to build loyalty. In this sense, email marketing becomes an essential part of achieving repeat business and clearing things between customers and business.
From 2011 to 2016, email marketing is still expected to grow by more than 61%. In collective budget allotment by companies in the United States alone, that is translated to more than $2.4 billion to be spent for this effort alone.
Today, newsletters and online catalogues are disseminated through emails. This kind of tactic converts to higher sales because prospective clients who sign-up as recipients are chiefly interested parties who have the highest chance of entering a successful purchase or return. That means the sender already has a confirmed feedback to be consolidated for consumer analysis even before an actual email can be sent.
Likewise, even email support as part of customer relations management is now an essential part of business as customers prefer real-time, or something close to it, when it comes to response.
There are two basic types of email marketing. One is transactional emails and the other is direct emails.
Transactional emails result from a prior action done by a recipient, like signing up to receive newsletters or a product inquiry. It also covers purchase confirmations, sales presentations, email receipts and dropped basket messages. It is also a perfect opportunity to convert subscribers into purchasers of whatever the business has to sell. Through transactional emails, the marketer is offered with an opportunity to either retain existing customers, convince potential customers or engage potential customers at least enough to make them consider you first in the future should they need something similar to what you have to offer.
On the other hand, direct emails refer to messages sent to specific recipients with the sole intention to announce something, as in the case of an upcoming discount promo or end-of-the-season sale. Usually, the marketing leads used in this email marketing are culled from subscribers’ list, rented from service businesses or bought from lead/list brokers.
Generally, the success of email marketing lies with the presentation and technicalities. First, the domain used to register the sender’s email address should have good page rank, positive reputation and security certificate. It should also not be blacklisted from search engines. For instance, if you plan on doing email marketing for your fledgling business, it is advisable that you get your own domain and register an email under it. Although Gmail or Yahoomail are both reputed email providers, they will not project a good image for business purposes.
Second, all relevant information should be presented as short as possible. This is especially true for direct emails. It is important for the layout and content to be professionally executed to look credible. If you do not have experience in designing email contents, it is imperative that you get a reliable graphic designer and copywriters because you will only have one shot. One wrong move and you can be flagged, which makes your emails a spam.
Lastly, the time of email blasting or sending should be within 1 AM to 5 AM in the US, to generate higher click rates and feedbacks.