Email marketing

Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email.
In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered
email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or
donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done
to either cold lists or current customer database. Broadly, the term is usually used to refer to:

Sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant
with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,

Sending email messages with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing
current customers to purchase something immediately,

Adding advertisements to email messages sent by other companies to their customers

Why is email marketing so popular?

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

Let's briefly review the some types of email marketing:

Types of email marketing

Email marketing can be carried out through different types of emails:

1.

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customers action with a company.
Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, purchase or order
confirmation emails and email receipts.
The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that
triggered it. But, due to its high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email newsletters)
transactional emails are a golden opportunity to engage customers; to introduce or extend the
email relationship with customers or subscribers, to anticipate and answer questions or to crosssell or up-sell products or services.[2][unreliable source?]
Many email newsletter software vendors offer transactional email support, which gives
companies the ability to include promotional messages within the body of transactional emails.
There are also software vendors that offer specialized transactional email marketing services,
which include providing targeted and personalized transactional email messages and running
specific marketing campaigns (such as customer referral programs).

2. Direct email

Direct email involves sending a promotional message in the form of an email. It might be an
announcement of a special offer, for example. Just as you might have a list of customer or
prospect postal addresses to send your promotions too, so you can collect a list of customer or
prospect email addresses.
You can also rent lists of email addresses from service companies. They'll let you send your
message to their own address lists. These services can usually let you target your message
according to, for example, the interests or geographical location of the owners of the email
address.
3. Retention email

Instead of promotional email designed only to encourage the recipient to take action (buy
something, sign-up for something, etc.), you might send out retention emails.
These usually take the form of regular emails known as newsletters. A newsletter may carry
promotional messages or advertisements, but will aim at developing a long-term impact on the
readers. It should provide the readers with value, which means more than just sales messages. It
should contain information which informs, entertains or otherwise benefits the readers.
4. Advertising in other people's emails

Instead of producing your own newsletter, you can find newsletters published by others and pay
them to put your advertisement in the emails they send their subscribers. Indeed, there are many
email newsletters that are created for just this purpose - to sell advertising space to others.

Comparison to traditional mail

There are both advantages and disadvantages to using email marketing in comparison to
traditional advertising mail.

Advantages
Email marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies for several reasons:

An exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has

proven to be high when done properly. Email marketing is often reported as
second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing
tactic.

Email Marketing is significantly cheaper and faster than traditional mail,

mainly because of high cost and time required in a traditional mail campaign
for producing the artwork, printing, addressing and mailing.

Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of email subscribers who have

opted in (i.e., consented) to receive email communications on subjects of
interest to them.

Almost half of American Internet users check or send email on a typical day,
with email blasts that are delivered between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. outperforming
those sent at other times in open and click rates.

Email is popular with digital marketers, rising an estimated 15% in 2009 to

292m in the UK.[6]

Disadvantages
A report issued by the email services company Return Path, as of mid-2008 email deliverability
is still an issue for legitimate marketers. According to the report, legitimate email servers
averaged a delivery rate of 56%; twenty percent of the messages were rejected, and eight percent
were filtered.
Companies considering the use of an email marketing program must make sure that their
program does not violate spam laws such as the United States' Controlling the Assault of Non-

Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM),[8] the European Privacy and Electronic
Communications Regulations 2003, or their Internet service provider's acceptable use policy.
Opt-in email advertising

Opt-in email advertising, or permission marketing, is a method of advertising via email whereby
the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. This method is one of several
developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of email marketing.
Opt-in email marketing may evolve into a technology that uses a handshake protocol between the
sender and receiver.This system is intended to eventually result in a high degree of satisfaction
between consumers and marketers. If opt-in email advertising is used, the material that is
emailed to consumers will be "anticipated". It is assumed that the consumer wants to receive
it,which makes it unlike unsolicited advertisements sent to the consumer. Ideally, opt-in email
advertisements will be more personal and relevant to the consumer than untargeted
advertisements.
A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's
customers. Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events or promotions, or new
products. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers
may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter.
With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in their database, marketers can send
out promotional materials automaticallyknown as Drip Marketing. They can also segment
their promotions to specific market segments.[11]

Where's the catch?

This all sounds great of course. Imagine how much cheaper it is to send a message to thousands
of email addresses, rather than thousands of postal addresses!
It's not that simple, unfortunately. Quite apart from the complexities of designing and delivering
email messages to the right people, getting them to actually read and respond to your message,
and measuring and analyzing the results, there is the issue of permission.

What's "permission"?

Responsible email marketing is based on the idea of permission. This is a complex issue and the
subject of intense debate in the marketing community.

Essentially, you need an email address owner's permission before you can send them a
commercial email. If you don't have this permission, then the recipients of your mail may well
regard your message as spam; unsolicited commercial (bulk) email.
You do not want to send spam!
If you are accused of sending spam, then you may find your email accounts closed down, your
website shut off, and your reputation in tatters. In some parts of the world, you may even be
breaking the law.
Quite apart from these practical considerations, there is also a strong argument which says that
long-term successful email marketing relationships with customers and others can only work
anyway if they're permission based.
The big question, of course, is what constitutes permission...and that is the main subject of
debate. It's important to remember that it's not your views, or even the views of the majority, that
count, but the views of those receiving your emails and those responsible for administering the
infrastructure of the Internet.
An example of permission is when your customer buys something from your online store and
also ticks a box marked "please send me news about product updates via email". You now have
"permission" to send that person product updates by email, provided you also give them the
opportunity to rescind that permission at any time.

Educate yourself

It's important to stress that anyone considering email marketing must read up on the subject of
permission and spam. If you don't understand the importance of permission and the risks of
ignoring it, then you could be heading for commercial disaster.
Don't panic, though. It's actually relatively easy to ensure that the address lists you use or build
yourself are permission-based.
OK, now that you're armed with some brief background information, browse the rest of this site
to find the resources you need to develop a better understanding of how email marketing can
work for you and your (potential) customers. Or to speed things up, try some of these email
marketing books.

Why do email marketing?

By Mark Brownlow, Sept 2012 (first published: Nov 2006)
People unfamiliar with email marketing often wonder what all the fuss is about. Didn't spam kill
email as a marketing vehicle? And if spam didn't kill it, what about blogs, Twitter and all the
other clever ways we can communicate online? Isn't email outmoded?
Those wondering about the benefits of email marketing in today's ever-changing online and
marketing environment will find the answers below.
It works

Businesses engage in email marketing because it works. And works well. Here are the numbers...

The DMA puts email marketing's ROI for 2011 at $40.56 for every $1
invested. The figure for 2012 is predicted to "fall" to $39.40, when email will
account for $67.8 billion in sales (reference).

A 2012 survey of consumer channel habits and preferences found 77%

preferred to receive permission-based promotions via email: 6% preferred
such messages via social media (reference). A similar survey of UK
consumers found 69% with a preference for email as the channel for brand
communications (reference).

The 2012 Marketing Channel and Engagement Benchmark Survey found 63%
of respondents cited email as the channel offering the best ROI (reference).

A survey of online marketing managers at the end of 2011 found 89.2% said
email is the same or more important to their overall marketing strategy when
compared to two years ago (reference).

In April 2011, 79% of search marketers said email had grown in importance
as a source of leads (reference).

72% of respondents to an Econsultancy survey in early 2011 described

email's ROI as excellent or good. Only organic SEO scored better (reference).

A 2011 business survey by Ireland's Marketing Institute saw 84% claiming

email marketing was important or very important to their marketing strategy
(reference).

The ForeSee Results 2010 report on the effectiveness of social media found
that promotional emails were the second biggest influence on retail website
visits. The biggest influence was familiarity with the brand (reference).

The money is following the results...

Email was the channel most likely to get more investment in 2012, according
to a survey of business leaders: 60% planned to increase their email
marketing budget. Social media was the next most popular at 55%
(reference).

An April 2012 survey of German marketing executives revealed that email

was used for marketing by 82%, second only in popularity to websites. More
respondents (53%) planned to increase investment in email than in any other
online channel (reference).

A 2012 social media survey found 87% of social media marketers also use
email marketing: 93% plan to maintain or increase their use of email
(reference).

The 2012 Marketing Channel and Engagement Benchmark Survey found 97%
of respondents using email marketing (reference).

When asked about their 2012 digital marketing budget priorities, only paid
search was cited more often by retailers than email (reference).

A July 2011 survey of marketers discovered that 54% planned to increase

their email marketing budget, while 3% planned to lower it (reference).

68% of small businesses surveyed in mid-2011 by Pitney Bowes listed email

as their preferred marketing channel (reference).

eCircle surveyed European marketers and found the most popular online
marketing channel was email (reference).

In a 2011 business survey by the Marketing Institute of Ireland, 88% of

respondents said they expected their email marketing budget to increase or
stay the same over the coming 12 months (reference).

Forrester's late 2010 survey of US marketers found 88% of B2C firms and
71% of B2B organizations using email marketing (reference).

A DMA survey of US and Canadian marketers in late 2010 found email was
the most widely used web-based direct marketing technique (reference).

A 2010 survey of 2,500 marketers by AWeber found 82% intending to

increase their email marketing efforts over the next 12 months (reference).

Why it works

Email marketing works for a variety of reasons...

It allows targeting

It is data driven

It drives direct sales

It builds relationships, loyalty and trust

It supports sales through other channels

Modern email marketing services and solutions support database integration, segmentation and
various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced
methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis.
And every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine
your approach and messages.
Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries,
registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores
and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen
relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty.
All in all, a pretty good way of going about your marketing business.But...
Let's not get carried away

Just like a garden only bears fruit if managed properly, so it is with email marketing. We know it
can work, but you have to get the basics right. The basics of building a list of people who want to
hear from you, crafting a message, and ensuring the emails get through to those on that list.
And once you have the basics right, there's a whole spectrum of more sophisticated tactics you
can employ to drive further success. Because the metrics show us that there's plenty of room for
improvement and plenty of rewards waiting for those who do improve.
Convinced? Start the email marketing journey with a look at the basics of email marketing.