With the ubiquity of electronic mail, direct marketing has taken a new form – email marketing. Email marketing is utilized to deliver messages concerning products, services, or programs to a particular segment of the market. Come to think of it, all emails that are sent to customers, whether current or possible ones, could already be counted as email marketing.
Email marketing is usually classified into two efforts:
- Companies sending emails to their past or current clientele roster to encourage loyalty and stronger bonds, which ultimately leads to repeat business. This type of email marketing campaign could come in the form of advertisements and links to social media buttons to increase the number of followers on fan pages.
- With the use of a properly targeted email list, a business could target its most prominent subscribers like thought leaders and opinion makers, as well measure the results of this effort more efficiently.
- * Companies can also send email marketing material to specifically acquire new customers or persuading current customers to take advantage of a promotion or a new product at once.
Email provides a connecting element to social media, binding the latter’s various forms to take out gaps or opportunities about to be missed. In the era of Web 2.0, all sectors, especially individual customers have email, which should be a field to be exploited by marketers. While not everyone has Facebook or Twitter accounts, everyone with an Internet presence has an email. Thus, it is a very powerful online marketing tool. Research estimates that annual revenue from email marketing is more than $1 billion.
The popularity of email marketing among companies can be attributed to the following factors:
- Cost efficiency
- For the results that email marketing brings, the medium is very affordable, especially when pitted against traditional text-based marketing strategies like printed newsletters and direct mail marketing.
- Method of message delivery
- Website advertising is passive, with the audience getting the message of the marketing effort only when they visit the site. The audience is handed the message through email marketing, without them having to go to a website.
- Easy tracking
- With the advent of email marketing platforms, advertisers can keep track of how many emails they sent out, how many recipients opened it, how many bounced back, and how many clicked through the links on the email.
- Speed
- Emails get to their recipients within seconds, while mailed ads take days.
- Audience reach
- With the most minimal effort, more email subscribers can receive the message.
- Success rate
- An email marketing campaign that is done well have proven positive results.
- Default activity
- Internet users check their email accounts once they log into their computers.
- Rippling effect
- One email message can prompt recipients to act on other messages that have been delivered automatically to them.