Understanding Email Marketing

The effective use of Email to promote your business

Email marketing is the modern equivalent of leaflets and flyers in some respects however there is a big difference to those older and more traditional methods. Email marketing is fully targeted where as sending out leaflets and flyers can be more of a chuck it and chance it approach.
 
Newspaper advertising, TV advertising and those other forms of marketing are now on the wane and its no wonder when you consider the cost effectiveness of using the new technologies. As usual we are following in the footsteps of the Americans when it comes to marketing using email messages.
 
Extensive studies have been carried out in the USA and here are some of their findings. In the table below you can see the Return on Investment (ROI) achieved by the three forms of marketing for every dollar spent in 2006.

Source - Direct Marketing Assn 2006

Arguably Email Marketing is the most effective marketing channel that has been devised to date and in the table above we can see that for every dollar spent on marketing by email has produced more than double the returns of any other methodology in 2006.
 
If you doubt this then ask yourself why is SPAM increasing while other more traditional methods or marketing are decreasing.
 
This does not mean that you should be going out there are spamming every potential client in he universe, far fro it, but it does mean that if you use professional and ethical techniques to deliver your email marketing you will increase your returns from your marketing efforts!

What makes Email Marketing so effective?

Firstly, you have to realise that if you send an email and the person receiving that message wants to print it off then they do so at their own cost. You no longer carry the print costs associated with more traditional methods like direct mail shots etc., or leaflet drops.
 
Second, you are able to reach a huge audience which is restricted only by your mailing list.
 
Third, email is almost instantaneous, not like traditional snail mail which can take a few days to reach its destination.
 
Fourth, it is an active and proactive form of advertising. By this we mean that your recipient is more eager to get your message and has no paper to get rid of unless they print out copies; also they can respond by clicking on links in the email which take them right to the information you want them to read and by doing so perhaps they buy more quickly.
 
And fifth, you are able to track what happens to the email and measure reactions, you can't do this with traditional methods so easily or so quickly.

The Critical Factors

Like all forms of advertising there are some factors which make all the difference between the good campaign with a good return and a bad campaign with poor results.
 
The last thing you want to do is add to all the spam emails that are flying around, it won't do you any good whatsoever and could result in you loosing your credibility. To make sure that your don't spam anyone the golden rule is use an email list that people have consented to joining. Not only does this ensure you are obeying all the rules on spamming, but your are also sending to people who are eager to receive your information. So the main thing is to comply with legislation.
 
You also need to know how your campaigning is doing so its important to set up systems that respond quickly to requests and inform you of dead emails or recipients who have not read or who have binned your email.
 
Another critical factor is that the campaign does not pile you up with additional work that you didn't want in the first place, so let's have a look at a good email marketing campaign package.