Email Marketing

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications.

What sort of email?

In its broadest sense, the term covers every email you ever send to a customer, potential customer or public venue. In general, though, it's used to refer to:

• Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy again
• Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship
• Placing your marketing messages or advertisements in emails sent by other people

Give me an analogy...

You can think of these three main forms of email marketing as the electronic equivalent of:

• Direct mail
• Sending people a print newsletter
• Placing advertisements in subscription magazines and newspapers

There is, however, one extremely important difference - the issue of permission (see later).

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

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.

To find out more about the Email Marketing contact us on 0845 307 1900 or djbarr@iscawebdesign.co.uk