Email Marketing

Marketing by email refers to using email as a method of retaining customers, acquiring new customers and driving sales. Done correctly, it is a highly effective method of promoting your business. On the other hand, done incorrectly, it will not only be a loss in sales and revenue, but your business reputation will be put on the line. Email marketing is critical to the success of your business so learning to do so properly may be a huge advantage.

Whether you have an online or offline business, almost the whole world is online! Marketing by email will save you money, drive traffic to your website, build customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, create sales and increase your profits.

There are truly endless benefits to email marketing. Firstly, email is popular. It has been rated as the most used and most popular application on the internet. Which makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? Some people don’t even browse the internet, but only use the email application.

Email is so much faster than regular postal mail and can save you valuable time. It is therefore the preferred primary means of business communication. Here are some statistics to give you a better idea:

• 34% of internet users check their email continuously throughout the day
• 42% of business users check their business email while on holiday
• 53% of business users check their email six or more times during the working day
• 96% of internet users’ main reason for being online is email

Now please excuse me while I click the send/receive button. There are over 450 million email boxes worldwide and this number is rapidly increasing! Email marketing is a billion dollar business!

The advantages of email outweigh those of regular post by far. It takes far less time to create and send an email, compared to posting a letter. And there are no envelopes to fumble with! The response rate of opt-in mail is 50 times greater than banner ads and 5 times greater than direct mail.

Email is instant. Minutes after sending out your email campaign you can start seeing responses and orders. And you can even time your campaigns to arrive on a certain day, choosing the best day of the week or month for you for maximum response. Instead of waiting weeks for your post to arrive, and even longer for responses, you will have them within hours. 80% of responses to an email campaign will occur within 3 days, whereas traditional mail takes weeks. So create an email newsletter today and see the response within the week!

A really great feature of email is that you can personalise your messages. Instead of “Dear Customer” you can address the recipient as “Dear Yvette” and send offers targeted to their preferences. You also don’t have to spend time writing out or even typing out these titles, as email has features which will allow you to create ‘merge mails’ within minutes.

Probably the most important factor to keep in mind when making use of email marketing is opt-in/opt-out. Your customers should want to receive these emails. Your website should have a form of sorts where customers can opt-in to your newsletter or any information you may want to send them. Once they have opted in and you can ad them to your mailing list, be sure that your newsletters have an opt-out, so that if he or she so wishes they can request not to receive any further information. This may not sound promising, but annoying customers who do not wish to receive your emails will only lead to a bad reputation for your business. Spam is something else which you should NEVER do! Spam is unsolicited email, commercial or non-commercial. If you are sending email to someone who has not requested it, you are then ‘spamming’. ‘Spamming’ may sound like the easy way to promote your business, but this is not the entertainment industry, and ‘bad publicity’ is NOT good! Not only will the reputation of your business suffer, but spamming is illegal and you could suffer huge loses and land yourself in court.