Email marketing techniques: newsletter or promotional email?

Marketing Articles | May 13, 2011

There are different types of email marketing but unfortunately too many people don't realise this. We look at two of the main types of email marketing.

Despite being a broad area, when most people think of email marketing they tend to think of promotional emails. You might be buying a holiday, for example, and at some point in the process you agree to hear about new deals. After that you get a message telling you about some really cheap holidays to Croatia or something similar. Not a thing wrong with that. The reader is getting exactly what they agreed to, in my case more ideas for holidays! As a marketer you can see great success levels with these kind of emails.

This isnt the only type of email marketing out there though, and if you apply this style in the wrong place it really doesnt work. The most common place for this to happen is in an email newsletter.

With a promotional email you are looking for a specific action from the recipient. The call to action is the focal point of the whole email and the design revolves around this action. The call to action can be different; a sale, a registration or even a download. You dont send an email like this to influence the behaviour of the reader in the future, the goal is immediate.

The email newsletter is completely different. The whole point of sending a newsletter is to grow a longer term relationship and influence future behaviour. The newsletter is particularly suited to customer retention or gaining long term purchasing from an existing customer. You can still promote deals, sales and products in your newsletter and it will also generate immediate sales. There does however need to be something more than a promotional email though to build the trust and loyalty that you need from a newsletter.

The real problem for marketers comes when you get these two different types of email marketing mixed up with each other. If you sell a news letter, you need to provide a newsletter, not a stream of one off promotions. If the reader doesnt get what they expected then your email will end up in the trashcan. Now of course the marketer believes that email newsletter wont work for them, despite the fact they havent actually sent one yet!

It doesnt necessarily matter which approach you choose. The key thing is to deliver what the customer expects when they sign up for your emails, so you need to be consistent throughout. There is absolutely nothing wrong with commercial messages and sending one off advertisements, but dont sell them as a newsletter.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For more information about making the most of your email marketing, contact email marketing company RapidShot.

Sarah Haines enjoys writing articles on a variety of topics, including email marketing.