E-mail Marketing - What It Is

E-mail marketing is an enormously effective tool to keep yourself in touch with your customers when utilized in a legal (non-spam) way, and can benefit your customers as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your existing customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a positive and cost effective way. Depending on how effective and helpful you make the message you’re trying to get across you can significantly increase your bottom line. In reality e-mail marketing is so inexpensive even if it doesn’t have a significant return; almost any amount of return becomes worthwhile.

The great thing about e-mail marketing campaigns is it doesn’t matter what size business you are, it is just as effective for a small business as it is for a large business; in fact, sometimes it benefits a small business considerably more. A good e-mail opt-in database can be worth infinitely more than what you spend on it to begin with as it can be used in so many different ways. Not only can you use it to get a marketing message across, you can use it as an ambassador of good will to your customers, sending them out helpful hints and tips, as well as utilizing it to follow up with customers who have purchased from you lately. It can have many, many different uses. However, with all that said let’s examine and define exactly what a decent e-mail marketing campaign is, and what it isn’t.

Wikipedia defines E-mail marketing as –

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• Adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• Sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

You can find that definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing. This definition pre-supposes that you are not e-mailing people that haven’t asked to be included in your mailing list. Sending unsolicited e-mail is called ‘spam’ - so what is the difference between e-mail marketing and spam? E-mail spam is defined loosely as unsolicited, bulk, commercial e-mail. Most people find e-mail spam to be distasteful at best.

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