What is Email Marketing ?

EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing is fast becoming one of the most widely used and successful forms of marketing communication. Email marketing is a means of marketing whereby a company or individual initiates a marketing communication through the use of email (electronic mail). Email marketing is often referred to as a form of direct marketing as it does not use traditional marketing channels such as television, radio or printed media.

Email marketing is usually initiated either to enhance the relationship with current customers, to make an immediate sale to it's current customers, to acquire new customers or to incorporate advertisements from a third party as part of an agreement.

Now The Question Comes ...
Why does Email Marketing present such a benefit over other more traditional forms of marketing? Why does it drive better returns on investment and customer engagement metrics than other marketing techniques? Why would you invest the time and resources to develop an Email Marketing program at all?


BENEFITS .......

• Reduced Time & Effort

Take a moment to think about the time and effort involved in structuring a direct-to-consumer or direct business-to-business campaign using one of the two most common offline direct marketing communications techniques:

•       Print Postal Mailings
•       Telesales Campaigns

With email marketing, however, you can turn a marketing communications piece out in typically less than two hours. Using recurring email templates, all you’ll need to do is to approve the copy for the email and any changes to graphics, use easy database list queries and decide to whom you want to send , and then just hit send. Weeks’ of work can be accomplished in just a few hours and by a single employee.

• Real-Time Messages

As we talked about above, with a print mailer or telesales campaign, you’ll need to select marketing campaigns and specials that have a “long tail” because of the extended period of time between campaign development and implementation. Because a marketing email can be completed in just a few hours, you can literally send “day-of” messages to help reduce stock or promote a limited time special as needed. You can even send unique real-time messages to customers that arrive on their birthdays or anniversaries. With email marketing, short time frames are your friend, not your enemy.

• Personalize Messages

Because print mail campaigns, telesales campaigns and even print, television and radio advertising campaigns must be done in a mostly “one-size-fits-all” format, it’s difficult for you to speak directly to your consumer in a personalized way. However, email marketing presents many dynamic opportunities.

• More Frequent Communications

Because email takes less time to create and send than other marketing and advertising channels do, you can communicate with your customers more frequently. Instead of only being able to send them a flyer or catalog once a month or once a quarter, you can easily send them offers once a week. You could, of course, send them email even more frequently than that if their email activity supports making that decision.

• Test Marketing Messages

Good marketing always means being able to test things! With email marketing, it becomes incredibly easy to see what graphics, headlines, offers and even colors your users and customers will respond to.

• Reduce Overhead Costs

Email marketing can be done at a very low overhead cost! You don’t need a ton of employees, designers, or marketing analysts. You don’t need to pay for printing, postal mailing costs, phone lines, or advertising rates. 

• Save the Planet with Email Marketing!

It may seem like a minor part of the big picture, but we’re all trying to be more environmentally friendly these days! When you optimize email marketing as your primary customer communication and direct-to-consumer or direct business-to-business marketing method, you’ll help save the planet by reducing the number of trees killed for print marketing pieces. We all want to help save the planet, and making a responsible decision about your marketing tools can help you to do just that while also improving your business’s success.

            Those are a lot of measurable benefits of email marketing over other marketing channels!  Email marketing is an important part of your marketing mix. However, as you can see, if you’re not incorporating email into your marketing plan, then you’re missing out on a number of benefits that can improve your overall sales and user engagement for a very low overhead cost and, in many cases, a very limited amount of time and effort.