Email Marketing: Pros and Cons

Email marketing, if done correctly, is a great way to reach new audiences and potential customers online. But like any marketing campaign, understanding the pros and cons of email marketing can mean the difference between successful and failed campaigns.

Pros

Brand awareness – Consistent email marketing helps consumers remember who your brand is. This can result in consumers sharing your material if they think it’s good, which further promotes your brand, and it helps them recall your brand when they are ready to make a buying decision.

Easily share information – Email marketing allows you to share content that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise in your specific industry or field, but it also gives you the opportunity to promote or announce a new product, service or limited-time special offer.

Open, targeted dialogue – Email marketing creates the opportunity to build conversations around topics consumers are interested in. Because opt in/out services are available in email campaigns, people who are genuinely interested in your products can receive your emails, and you’re able to build targeted campaigns around this group.

Fast and cheap to produce – Email marketing campaigns don’t require as many hours and dollars of design and printing services that direct mail campaigns need since a variety of free and low-cost email marketing sites are out there.

Cons

Difficult getting attention – It’s very much possible that your marketing email may never be opened by consumers. Bulk email programs are unpredictable because a marketing email can be seen as unimportant and deleted or caught in the spam folder and never seen by consumers.

Bad reputation – Unsolicited emails can leave a bad taste in a consumer’s mouth and make a person consider your company less than reputable. If anyone on your list hasn’t opted in or if an unsubscribe request isn’t taken care of immediately, your company’s image can be tarnished.

Relevance – Sending relevant information to a large group of people is difficult to accomplish. Consumers want quality information that is pertinent to them. If there isn’t a clear and appropriate call to action for your target group, they’ll move on to the next email.

Requires time and thought – From the body content and call to action to the subject line that gets people to click on the email, creating quality email content consumers are interested in can be time consuming.

So there you have it. Like any marketing campaign, there are pros and cons to email marketing that should be considered before planning an advertising strategy around it. But if you do it right, email marketing can be very effective.

This article was originally published by Fortress Consulting Group.