Email Marketing powered by ResultsMail.com.au
As is quite apparent from the term, email marketing is about using email as a marketing tool to advertise or promote a brand, service, or product. In other words, it’s a type of direct marketing, utilising electronic mail as a way of conveying commercial messages to people. Although in its most comprehensive sense every e-mail that is sent to an existing or potential customer can be regarded as e-mail marketing, nevertheless, the term generally signifies the following:

• E-mails sent to promote the loyalty of the customer and to enhance the relationship between existing customers and the merchandiser.
• E-mails sent in order to get new customers or to convince current customers to purchase something again.
• Advertisements or marketing messages placed in the e-mails sent by other merchandisers.

Businesses are generally dependent on referrals from current customers, utilise a subscription service, or pay an e-mail broker a fee to acquire the e-mail addresses of the customers they want to target with their e-mail marketing messages. Most companies, as might be expected, make use of a combination of the above methods.

What are the Advantages of E-mail Marketing?

There are several reasons for the popularity of e-mail marketing with businesses – here are some:

• One of the best advantages of email marketing is the capability of distributing a marketing message to a large databases of possible customers relatively affordably. For example, when compared to investments in other media like printed newsletters or direct mail, it is much cheaper.
• Email marketing allows the advertiser to send the message to the targeted audience, unlike a website that must wait on the chance of the customers dropping by.
• Also, an email marketing strategy can involve sending a number of e-mails successively, building on one another. For example, this method is often used for targeting specific dates that may be upcoming, like Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, Australia Day, Valentine’s Day, and so on.
• Unlike advertisements that are mailed, email marketing messages are practically instantaneous. When an email is sent, it arrives at its destination within seconds or minutes.
• The Return On Investment, or ROI, can be tracked accurately, and when done properly has proven to be highly effective. It is said that as an online marketing strategy, email marketing is second only to search engine marketing.
• Email marketing efforts are easy to keep track of by using click-throughs, read-receipts, un-subscribes, bounce messages, web bugs, and so on, which can be used for assessing negative and positive responses, open rates, and correlating sales with marketing.
• Email marketing strategists have access to considerable numbers of email subscribers who have consented, or opted in, to get the emails on subjects that they are interested in.
• Business is generated affordably as well as automatically.

The advent of email marketing has transformed the way business is done, having a clear edge over other types of marketing communication. Hence, email marketing is here to stay for a long time indeed.