Jay LeonardUpon doing a bit of research, it can be concluded that the majority of businesses thinking about promoting their company offers via email marketing are not searching for “how to create an effective email campaign,” but rather looking for answers to the most basic, standard question, “What is email marketing?” In fact, according to keyword search statistics, at least 673,000 people monthly demand answers to this very question.
So, in an effort to respond to the hundreds of thousands of people typing this question into search engines every month, I will go ahead and define what this marketing platform is, how it works, and how exactly it can be beneficial for your business.
Email marketing is a method of outreach for companies that are trying to generate exposure of their product or service offerings, drive traffic to their website, and build and retain a loyal customer base.
Before getting into the nitty gritty and technical components of how it works, it is important to first understand the different types of email marketing.
1. Newsletter Email Marketing – Marketing to an optin email database consisting of your existing customers with the primary goal to keep in touch with them on a frequent basis is what is called newsletter email marketing. A company will attempt to maintain this beneficial relationship by emailing different forms of corporate correspondence to their current clients in the form of company announcements, press releases, and new, upcoming events.
2. Promotional Email Marketing – This form of advertising is similar to newsletter email marketing in that it involves sending emails to your existing customer database. However, as opposed to sending weekly or monthly company updates, you are sending promotional offerings, consisting of product or services launches, coupons, sales, and/or special promotions.
3. Acquisition Email Marketing – All email marketing that is centered on acquiring new customers falls under this specific category. Acquisition email marketing involves sending emails aimed at driving traffic to your corporate website, encouraging new, unique visitors to sign-up for something, increasing sales, or merely gaining exposure of your company brand name, product, or service offerings.
Now that the different types of email marketing have been laid out, it is important to get a grasp on how the entire process works. If you are delivering email messages to your own customer base of opt-in subscribers, you will need to begin your search for an ESP (Email Service Provider) that has the technological capabilities to deliver your own email offer to your own email list of opt-in consumers or business decision makers. If you have not yet built and designed an HTML email creative to send, your chosen ESP most likely offers a service that will create an email creative or advertisement to capture the message that you desire to disseminate to your audience.
If, on the other hand, you are attempting to attract new visitors to your site, you will need to find an ESP with its own optin email database of permission-based email data to which you will direct your email message. Using its own email software in place, your chosen ESP will deploy your message to a specified target market to attract those who could be interested in what you have to offer. All you need to do is provide the from name, the subject lines, an email creative or advertisement and the landing page that the email recipients will be directed to once they click on the link within your advertisement.
Sending commercial message via email has become one of the most effective and inexpensive forms of advertising offered. Based on a recently published study, approximately 90% of the population prefers to be notified of company products and services via an e-newsletter while only 10% prefer to be notified via Facebook. Given that the volume of advertising clutter on the Internet is steadily increasing, what better way to inform prospective consumers of your offerings by sending an email that lands directly to their inbox and makes it easy for them to seek additional information about you?
This link will provide you additional information regarding targeted email marketing campaigns.
For a list of all of the different categories of people that you would like to market to based on demographic and psychographic criteria, review this list of targeted email marketing databases.
Here is additional information about the Guaranteed Opens Email Marketing Program in which you only pay for the emails that have been delivered to the inbox, opened, and read.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Useful read Meredith
I’ve seen a number of articles on what email marketing does, the benefits, etc – but few on what it is.
The best way to undestand the gist of it is visiting the solutions providers themselves. Some include:
-MailChimp.com
-AWebber.com
MailChimp provides a free basic service – which is great for anyone who wants to get a practical understanding of how email marketing works and what it can do for you.