Email Marketing

- May 11, 2019

Electronic mail or Email is the means by which we can electronically get messages across to one another as against the conventional mode of paper-based messaging. A few years ago, businesses and marketers considered email marketing as the ugly duckling of marketing. Email marketing has undergone sea change in last 4 years and nowadays business is enjoying great response and success with proper implementation of email marketing.

Email marketing is type of marketing in which commercial message is sent to group of people using electronic media. Every email sent to a potential customer or current customer can be considered as email marketing.

Companies use email marketing as a way of connecting with their customers. Email is often used to promote product, discounts and content, as well as to direct people toward the company's website. There are many types of emails company might send in an email marketing campaign include: Blog subscription, Newsletters, Special offer, Automated etc.

Companies are realizing how effective email marketing is on consumer behavior. Email marketing has gained popularity in recent period. The proliferation of spam email in the early years of the internet affected the image of email marketing. Email marketing tests and studies reveal that email marketing can affect consumer behavior, even convincing consumers to go to websites for more detail information or to make a purchase. Email is most effective form of digital marketing. Email not only saves time but also efforts, paper and resources.

Marketing with help of email can be a fast, flexible and cost-effective way of reaching new customers and retaining existing customers. Email marketing can allow companies to create targeted and customized messages. Email marketing helps to increase response rate and can be combined with other tools. However, company must not overuse email marketing as people nowadays consider commercial email as spam.

Advantages of Email marketing

Personalized: One of the best things about email marketing is personalization. This allows sending different messages to different customer. One can segment marketing list, so that company’s customers can receive messages from company that they are interested in.

Shareable: One can easily share and forward company’s mail, which help in building reputation of company through word of mouth and word of mouse. This may help influence new customers.

Cost- effective: Email marketing is most cost-effective type of marketing. There is no advertising fee or media space cost. Email marketing software is easily available at low cost and personalization.

Real-time marketing: Email marketing company to connect with customer on real time basis. Company can get real time result and response. It allows to easily track the effectiveness of campaign. Email message shows how many people received it, how many opened it and how many clicked through to the link and made purchase.

Permission-based: Email marketing requires permission of their customer. Customer can choose their preference. This allows company to send email to relevant customer.

Integration: Companies can easily integrate email marketing with other marketing efforts. Best way is to integrate with website and asking user to subscribe to receive emails, newsletters etc. Time taken to create email marketing or newsletter is much shorter than creating campaign for traditional media. Free software is available which helps company to use readymade templates to speed up the process and reuse it.

Disadvantage of email marketing

Spam: Spam is unsolicited emails. If company sends too many emails it can give the customer a negative view of the company. At times emails may irritate the customer.

Undelivered mails: At a times email may not reach to intended audience. Sometimes the email headline may not be enticing and exciting enough for the customer to open email.

Repetition: In traditional advertising repetitive ads are necessary for the eventual notice and response of the prospect. One cannot apply same strategy in email marketing. When repetitive emails are sent, they are likely to be ignored or deleted.

Design problems: Company must design email in a such a way that it appears as it should and must support multiple devices and email providers. Company must use combination of aesthetic design &functionality.

Size issue: Files must be of optimal size to download quickly. Emails must not contain clutter of images which may take too long to load, losing audience’s interest. Email must be short simple and informative.

Resources and skills: For a successful email campaign company must ensure that they have proper plan, strategy, resource and inhouse skilled employees. If company don’t have the resource or skills, company must consider outsourcing some of these campaigns

Impact of email marketing on consumer

Email is one of the most convenient and familiar form of communication. Emails are a great way to convey messages to your customers with the help of email marketing. Email marketing is the use of email for the purpose of marketing a product or service. Not only is it used for product promotion, it is also a great way to develop relationships with customers. Companies are starting to realize how effective email marketing can be and each day more and more businesses are chipping in this trend.

Positive impact

Email marketing is used by companies to influence the buying decisions & behavior of consumers. Email marketing has positive impact on both online as well as offline Sales.

Some offers can be in form of coupon and redeemed at the physical location of the store.

Personalization, Timing, relevance of email all affect how consumers reacts to email marketing message.

Facts

1. Approximately 97 percent of businesses are using email marketing to try to convert email recipients into buyers.

2. According to a Smith-Harmon survey, 76 percent of subscribers have made purchases from an email marketing message.

Negative impact

It also seems that email marketing can bring out negative behavior in customer as they irritate customer by sending same mail again and again. For companies that send unsolicited emails or too many emails, consumers tend to ignore or can be impelled to hit the spam button there are many tools available that can detect commercial message and automatically category them to spam. There is blur line between commercial message and spam. If the company sends too many emails, the consumers get annoyed and, rather they unsubscribe. Some consumers think spam as email from a company that they don’t want to hear from even if they have previously done business with the company or are subscribed to receive information from that company.