subject: What Are The Benefits Of Email Marketing? [print this page] Email marketing involves sending email messages which have useful information and / or promotion of your site, products or services. The products may be either your own or affiliate products.
The important part of email marketing is that you only deliver the emails to people on your 'list'. Your list is composed of the people from whom you have permission to send them the content. Sending emails to people otherwise is spam and a complete no no for anyone who wants to run an genuine and ethical internet business. The consistent communication develops trust between you and your prospective customers.
You also send follow up emails and online newsletters to your existing customers to promote more products you have that they may be interested in. They may well be as they will have already bought a quality product from you. Junk products will only get you refund demands.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of this type of marketing?
Advantages
Only people who have provided their details will receive your emails. This is called 'opt in'. Their name and email address will be provided when they visit your site and accept your offer of a weekly newsletter or a free report. Done in the right way, you can prove the integrity of your business and assure people that they can unsubscribe anytime.
It's cost effective. Email has the advantages of direct-mail advertising, without the expense of stationary, publishing and postage. You will need to sign up to a reliable autoresponding company to deal with your lists. It is priced at about 20 $ a month which is great value for a set and forget service.
Your marketing can be kept track of. All aspects can be tracked such as who opened your emails, which links were clicked and if they went on to purchase your product. You can boost your marketing by finding out what is and isn't performing.
Your whole list is contacted in seconds and there is the potential for people to forward your email. This makes your marketing even more extensive and your emails could become viral.
You can test all elements of your campaign. You can perfect your techniques,such as image positioning, subject lines and keywords.
And the disadvantages?
As I mentioned before, you only email people who have granted their permission. Having said that people have a tendency to register to anything and everything and then forget. I used to do this all the time Of course the more reasonable of us just unsubscribe and despite the fact that this option is clear on opt in emails, some individuals will still decide to report you.
Autoresponder set up. This is not at all a disadvantage. It's a great resource to manage your list. Having said that you do need to set it up to begin with and if you are a total newbie, you might find it confusing. It just takes some work at first. If you subscribe to a reliable company (like I did) they will provide you with all the support you need and don't mind how many queries you have. It's definitely worth the learning curve because once it's set up you can just allow it to do its job!
Spam filters. Some people still do not know just what a white list is. It is a list of all the people you WANT to correspond with. Your emails may get added to the list automatically but spam filters are very powerful, so it's advisable to remind people on your list about their white list to avoid your emails from being blocked.
