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Email Marketing Solutions
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In the age of the Internet how does a business maintain a relationship and keep communicating with all those people who were once its customers? Most successful businesses are able to make repeat sales once they have made a person a customer – the business maintains a database that may include the Name, the Address, the Contact Number and also the email address. Maintaining such a database enables the company to contact the customer once more on special occasions with other offers and perhaps also announce the special deals and discount offers. Though there are other ways of communicating, but email is the most popular among them. This exercise of sending emails to people to make them come back and become customers once more is referred to as email marketing.

So email marketing can be said to be…

The act of sending emails to enhance a business relationship with current customers or all those who were customer’s sometime back in the hope of repeat business.
The act of sending emails to all those people whose contact details are in the database but who have not been customers ever and an attempt to convince them to try out some of the products or services that are being offered.
The act of inserting advertisements in the emails that are sent by other companies to their own customers.

Problems of email marketing

Like everything else, there are problems with email marketing as well. The biggest problem is that of spam. There are many companies that are abusing the reach of the Internet and sending out spam emails in thousands using some software product and many of these emails are dubious too. Because of this the receivers have become wary and scared of spams, and the email servers too send all such emails into the ‘Bulk’ folder rather than the ‘inbox’. Internet system administrators have taken note of this and they are enhancing the security to solve this problem. According to a report, as much as 56% of emails go to the ‘Bulk’ folder, 20% emails are outright rejected 8% emails are filtered. This leaves about 16% that reaches the receiver.

But reaching the Inbox is just half the battle. There too the email has to fight for the attention of the receiver and urge the person to click the link to make him/her open it. Because only after the email has been opened does the matter inside has a chance to get viewed or read, and then when the person takes the required action is the exercise a success.

How successful are email marketing campaigns?

In spite of the problems of email marketing, it can still be successful. Yes the success rate can be low – sometimes as low as about 1%, which means that the business is able to make a sale to about 10 people out of every 1000 people who received the email. But since it costs almost nothing to send emails, it still works out profitably for the business. But email marketing campaigns are carried out for a huge number of people and not just hundreds and thousands, and so even if the number of conversions are less, the revenues can still be considerable. Obviously the emails and not sent individually – the company uses a software to send all these emails. But it is important to spread the campaign over days and not just send all these huge number of emails in a day or two because the email servers are able to read these bulk emails and block them off.

Opt-in email marketing

‘Opt-in’ is when the owner of the email address has opted to receive the email. And since the person has opted in, all emails sent to him/her is considered as spam. The person who has opted in has agreed to receive the emails from the sender and anticipates all such emails. This is a great answer for all those companies that are into email marketing to send legitimate emails. Often companies give away freebies such as a free to download ebook in exchange for the email address of the person – and this is justified because opt-in emails are of great value naturally.

Important elements in an email marketing campaign
  • The subject line of the email is very important. The subject line has to grab the attention because otherwise the email may get lost on the inbox. Some senders are able to customize the subject line by including the name of the receiver.
  • The day of the week and the time of the day of sending. The sender has to determine at what time of the day, and at which day of the week the email should be sent. It might not be advisable to send the email during the weekend or on Monday when the person might be away or too busy. It might be best to send the email at a time when he/she is supposed to be free and relaxed.
  • The call to action. What is the receiver supposed to do once he/she has gone through the email? If the person is supposed to view the products that are being offered, then the email must contain a link to the website.

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