Email Marketing-An Extra Ordinary Marketing Solution

Introduction:

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing.

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications email marketing is so popular because:

Sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication

Email lets you deliver your message to the people (unlike a website, where the people have to come to your message)

Email marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right.

Email marketing is especially popular because it can be much cheaper than traditional mail marketing. After all, email does not incur printing or postage fees. This does not mean, however, that email is free. An email marketing campaign may actually incur a number of different kinds of fees. If the company hires someone to design, write copy for, or oversee the emailing in any way, or has a full-time staff member for this type of work, the salary or fee of this individual must be taken into account. Furthermore, there will be a fee if the email addresses are purchased through an email broker.

One of the great things about email marketing is that it can reach a wide audience in a short period of time. Furthermore, an email marking campaign can include a number of successive emails that build upon one another. One of the most common forms of a building email marking campaign is one that targets a specific upcoming date such as Christmas, Fathers Day, or Memorial Day.

If, for example, a furniture store is planning a large Veterans Day sale, they might send out an email to their customers a few weeks in advance announcing the sale. Additional emails the week before and days before the sale might also be sent as reminders to reinforce the first email. Some companies even include special promotion codes and coupons in their emails.

One of the disadvantages to email marketing is something called spam. Spam is the word for both a tinned meat and email that is sent out to a huge number of people with little discretion. Spam is the email marketing version of carpet bombing. In fact, most email services include spam filters that weed out such emails from the general inboxes of their customers.

Email marketing is currently the most commonly used online marketing tool. The reasons are plentiful. Nothing can beat it when it comes to marketing success. Many marketers have attained success using this powerful marketing tool.

1) Global reach: No matter where you are or whom you need to reach, targeted emails pave the way. Borders are no obstacles in email marketing.

2) Lower cost: Costs incurred in designing, executing, testing, sending and receiving an email is up to 78% less for a run of 5000 over paper-based direct mail version. When you add e-mail to your marketing mix, you spend less time, money and resources than with traditional marketing vehicles like direct mail or print advertising.

3)  Interactive: You can innovatively initiate campaigns using graphics, videos, music, quiz, game or whatever that will be of interest to your prospect, to grab his attention and interest immediately.

4) Highly personalized: Email enables you to personalize and greet every person you target. This helps in creating a special bond with the prospects.

5) Round the clock marketing: With an email the audience can understand your offering even when you are out of office.

6) Measurable results: Special tools are available that accurately measure click-through rate, conversion rate, how a person one arrived at your website, and more, to enable you to assess the success of different email campaigns.

7) Targeted marketing: Since prepackaged and custom-built lists are available, you could reach only those who might require your services, solutions or products without bothering those who do not. You can select each one of your targets based on geography, age, income, spends, and many other parameters.