Why Invest in Email Marketing?

People who are unaware of the potential of email marketing often fail to understand what the fuss is all about. Hadn’t spam killed email as a marketing medium, is the first thought that comes to mind. Also with social media marketing becoming the new craze, people tend to write off email as being outmoded. However, businesses continue to engage in email marketing because it shows results, despite all the criticisms from the naysayers’ camp. Let us run some figures now. According to an early 2011 survey conducted by Econsultancy, 72 percent of the respondents described the return on investments from email marketing as either excellent or good. Email was second only to organic SEO. According to another research conducted by Direct Marketing Association expected marketing through emails to generate a return on investment of $42.08 for each dollar spent in 2010. Email marketing is definitely not dead, it’s alive and clicking.

Email Marketing:What is It?

Email marketing basically refers to direct marketing where your commercial marketing message is distributed among groups of people through electronic mail. It can be effectively used for building relationships between businesses and their customers or even to gain new clients. It may involve advertising your brand, product or service through emails, sending newsletters and other unique and relevant content which might interest your readers. Businesses usually have to obtain the email addresses of prospective customers, either through subscription services, referrals from existing clients or by paying an email broker. Businesses usually employ a combination of all these methods for the best results.

Email Marketing: Why It Works

Here are some of the major reasons why email marketing works.

• Broader Reach: One of the major reasons why marketing through email works is because of its wide reach. Today, you will hardly find anyone without an email address. This implies that you can easily reach out to a huge prospect or customer base. However, you must first get the permission of the email recipients about whether you can include them in your mailing list.
• Proactive: Businesses and organizations often invest in getting their ads in Yellow Pages, newspapers etc. However, for you to get customers, they must first come across your ads. However, with email marketing the message is going right to the place where your prospective customers will be sure to look at it – their inbox. And unlike newspaper ads and paper based mails, email also allows prospects to get in touch with you directly.
• Targeted: Many advertising forms are based on hitting large groups of people with their message, even if most of them are not interested in the hope that at least a few will respond. Marketing through emails on the other hand is based on the concept of sending the right messages to the right people directly, based on their personal preferences and market conditions. You can actually make a master list and then segment it based on gender, age, marital status, income, geographical location etc. This helps to eliminate a lot of doubts which render other marketing forms ineffective.
• Low Cost of Entry: Usually most forms of marketing and advertising require a huge initial investment before you even get to see any measurable results. Email marketing on the other hand requires little up front investment. This will enable you to market your service or product more effectively, without having to halt your core business activities to get it done.

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