INTRODUCTION
In this new era of CAN-SPAM legislation, overflowing inboxes and ever-increasing customer expectations, many of the practices that worked for emailers in the past simply won’t work anymore.The companies that can boast the most effective email programs today have been successful because they’ve completely overhauled their way of thinking . They have changed their strategy from blasting to an unsuspecting audience, to communicating with a willing and increasingly loyal customer base. According to Darwin’s Theory those who are most fit will survive the competition. Recipient’s inbox is no different. To make an email program succeed and thrive , marketers need to constantly evolve their email programs to improve relevancy. Many of the lessons learned when email was in its infancy remain as valuable today. But a lot has changed. Email marketers are now operating in a radically different environment. Customers are far more sophisticated than they were a few years ago, and they have come to expect much more from the companies they interact with electronically. Without change of mindset or without understanding the new context, both brand and customer relationship are at a risk.
To succeed in the new world of email marketing ,it is needed to move away from the old assumptions and adopt a new way of thinking. Rather then asking, “How big is my list?” ask , “How engaged are my recipient?”. Instead of asking, “What does my subject line say?” ask “How am I building my brand over this series of campaigns?”.
This article gives a focus on the new approaches to email marketing.
THE PROBLEM
Do you have a product or service to sell? Are you tired of promoting and getting nowhere? Are you interested in increasing your sales by 1000%? Are you sick of getting counter offers in your inbox? Are you looking for something with money back guarantee? Are you going from one safelist to another cutting and pasting your ads? If your answer is yes, then the solution has found you. What is the solution? Targeted email is the most direct and powerful method of marketing on the internet today. Targeted, Safe, and 100% Opt in. There are potentially millions of buyers waiting for your products and services…
DETAIL IDEA
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 old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business. ·
Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old customers to buy something immediately. ·
Adding advertisements in e-mails sent by other companies to their customers. ·
Emails that are being sent on the Internet (Email did and does exist outside the Internet, Network Email, FIDO etc.) Researchers estimate that as of 2004 the E-mail Marketing industry’s revenues has surpassed the $1 billion/year mark.
Miscellaneous Email Marketing Advises Email is one of the most personal advertising medium ever invented. Here are four of the many ways you can improve your email marketing results. Spread the Word Get others to sign up for your mailing lists with their consent. Spread the word about your mailing list through word of mouth. The beauty in this is that the list of emails will be self-screened and the database will only contain the people who are interested in your offers. Make sure you have their consent beforehand.
You don’t want to risk losing reputation or SPAM penalties. Persistence Before the internet, they used to say it takes around 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad. Today I would guess it to be over twice as high with the internet present. Make sure you are reaching out to your clients at least once a month in emails or other medium. Just because you emailed a list of people and had little or no response does not necessarily mean your audience isn’t interested in your product. Experiment with different emails, get to know which email strategy works best, and keep using it to reach out to your audience.
They Want Useful Information Emails should contain something that the customer wants. It shouldn’t be just a summary of your company or your resume. Focus on giving more than just what you sell. Specific content, messages, and other targeted information that interests your customers are good to include. For example, if you were selling makeup, you may want to include advice on how to apply the makeup or any makeup in general. Make Sure Your Audience Reads Your Emails Graphics, Flash animations, logos are often blocked by email filters. Although they look impressive on an email, they will often lower your impression statistics. I recommend using flat text with hyperlinks to your site. Once they get to your site, you can show them as many graphics as you want. Although some businesses have both a plain and a rich text edition of their email, for starters, stick to the plain text.
Advantages And Disadvantages:
E-mail marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies because:·
Compared to other media investments such as direct mail or printed newsletters, it is less expensive. ·
Return on investment has proven to be high when done properly. ·
It is instant, as opposed to a mailed advertisement, an e-mail arrives in a few seconds or minutes. ·
It lets the advertiser “push” the message to its audience, as opposed to a website that waits for customers to come in. ·
It is easy to track. An advertiser can track users via web bugs, bounce messages, un-subscribes, read-receipts, click-throughs, etc. These can be used to measure open rates, positive or negative responses, corrolate sales with marketing. ·
Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in (consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them · When most people switch on their computer the first thing they do is check their e-mail. ·
Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger other messages to be automatically delivered. With above benefits it comes with some bad effects too. Spam, the main danger of email marketing sometimes creates hindrance in taking benefits as part of email marketing. Mainly email marketing is used by companies to interact with their customers whereas spam can be defined as a set of unsolicited mails that fills customer’s inbox and make it out of use. It is frequently difficult to distinguish between legitimate email marketing and spams. At first spammers attempt to represent themselves as legitimate users rendering the real issue. To avoid these spammers a lot of spam filters are now introduced in the field that helps blocking only spams and not the legitimate emails. Even though email marketing has the above specified risk, it can overcome easily by the introduction of spam filters and provide people the full benefits of email marketing.
Open Source Email Marketing Software
Although there’s some really great tools out there, like Aweber and Send Studio, I’m going to be talking about a few Open Source (read free) alternatives that you can start with. Now, these software are not for the faint-hearted or technologically challenged. Although most of them are quite simple to install, you still need to have some grasp of the technical jargon involved. You’ll find that popular hosting panels like cPanel and Fantastico might have them pre-installed.
1. DadaMail - Dada Mail has been around for awhile. Its written in Perl and can be set to use a flat file or a database like MySQL or PostgreSQL. The installation can be a bit daunting, but worth the effort. Once installed you can use it to generate your subscription form and cut and paste that into your website easily. Read our Dada Mail review here.
2. PhpList - The description on their website reads: “PHPlist is a double opt-in newsletter manager. It is written in PHP and uses an SQL database for storing the information. PHPlist is software that runs on a server.” The install is also quite simple but I found the interface less friendly than Dada Mail’s. However it has some nice prebuilt features like Open and Click Tracking, plus a nice ability to pickup from the last email in case the sending fails midway.
3. Infinite Responder - Unlike the 2 above, this is an Sequential Autoresponder developed with PHP that allows you to time your messages. It has an opt-in feature plus allows for Unlimited Autoresponders. A nice piece of software with an active forum to ask for help when you need it.
CONCLUSION
The golden question: is email marketing still effective? Are droves of prospective customers (both opt-in and solicited) reading your emails at a high rate and at high speeds? Well, this depends on what type of email you send. First, take a look at where email marketing is headed. It is a billion dollar a year industry, with about 65% companies of all types using 5-10% of their budget on email campaigns. Marketing with email is expected to yield more than 7 billion dollars this year. Companies are looking into buying ad space on widely circulated newsletters with tons of subscribers and email list vendors are earning big business. Lets look at the response rate of Marketing with email - the ultimate way to judge effectiveness! Sadly enough, tons of unsolicited spam emails go unread.
Through statistics, we’ve discovered that 5 to 15 percent of all e-mails are answered. Like the click through rates of banner advertisements at popular websites, spam emails are discarded like yesterday’s trash. A quick browse at the subject line ¨Free Viagra¨ and people are quick to press the delete button. Advertising is a very tricky medium - if your email campaign is not specifically targeted or if it does not employ creative and original strategies that lure customers, there will be a dead-end. That said, unsolicited email (generic and commercial in nature) is usually not received by anyone. The likelihood of a person clicking on unsolicited mail is extremely low. In addition to the fact customers might not be interested in your offers in the first place, the margin for success is small! If you have a relationship with the customer beforehand, email marketing can exceed boundaries.
In order for email campaigns to work effectively, it must be solicited in the form of opt-in lists and permission. Adding a checkbox to your online store that says something along the lines of ¨send me periodic updates about your incoming shipments¨ for a customer to tick off fares better off in the marketing with email game. If you have customer permission to send them updates and newsletters with additional information, it will be well received! Marketing with email is most effective with two-way communication. Unsolicited spam mail is considered a one-way message because it is chock full of advertisements that ask customers to visit websites and purchase products. It takes up their time without receiving any sort of compensation. Email marketing campaigns through opt-in lists are different - they are tailored towards the customer’s interest and garner higher response rates.
Your email list is paramount as well. Back up your campaign by purchasing a list from a list vendor who offers email addresses that are willing to receive your advertisement. Each email address usually costs between 20 and 40 cents. Newsletters and promotions combined together make for explosive campaigns. A well written, HTML formatted newsletter can boost traffic and generate sales. Promotions can initiate customers to buy a product that they are interested in. You see, the secret to an effective promotion is the interaction between the customer and the business. Notice the trend: unsolicited email appearing out of no where flooding your Inbox will not generate the same response as a newsletter an opt-in list member subscribed to. By exercising business/customer relations and gauging your customer’s needs, your email marketing will become more fruitful and lead to the dollars.
BIBILOGRAPHY
E-mail marketing termsAuto-responders Automatic replies sent by the e-mail software of the recipient after receipt of an e-mail. Bounce messages e-mail sent back to the server that originally sent the e-mail. Bounce rate Ratio of bounced e-mails to total e-mails sent. Bulk, bulking Terms used by spammers to refer to their line of work. Mostly synonymous with spam or UCE. Call to action Words in the e-mail that entice recipients to do something. Click-through The action of clicking on a link. Click-through rate (CTR) Ratio of click-throughs to total e-mails sent.
Double opt-in
A term coined by spammers to refer to the normal operation of secure electronic mailing list software. A new subscriber first gives his/her address to the list software (for instance, on a Web page) and then confirms subscription after receiving an e-mail asking if it was really him/her. This ensures that no person can subscribe someone else out of malice or error. Double opt-out Same as Opt-In, but the recipient unsubscribes instead of subscribes. False positives E-mail that is not spam but is labeled spam by a spam filter of the recipient. Note that e-mail marketers may have different opinions of what is “spam” than e-mail recipients. Format E-mails can be sent in plain text, HTML, or Microsoft’s rich text format. Hard bounceBounced e-mail that could never get through because the e-mail address doesn’t exist or the domain doesn’t exist. List broker Reseller of lists of e-mail addresses.
List building Process of generating a list of e-mail addresses for use in e-mail campaigns. Opt-in
The action of agreeing to receive e-mails from a particular company, group of companies or associated companies, by subscribing to an e-mail list. Opt-out A mailing list which transmits e-mails to people who have not subscribed and lets them “opt-out” from the list. Spam or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial e-mail-UCE) From the sender’s point-of-view, spam is a form of bulk mail, often sent to a list obtained by companies that specialize in creating e-mail distribution lists. Spam filter Software that is usually installed in the users e-mail client, with the purpose of avoiding spam e-mail to get into the client’s inbox or at least to be flagged as such. Subject line It is one of the most important issues in e-mail marketing.
The better the subject line of an e-mail, the better probability of being opened by the recipient. Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) Commercial e-mail, usually of an advertising nature, sent at the expense of the recipient without his or her permission. Sending UCE is an offense against all major ISPs’ terms of service, and is a crime in some jurisdictions.
WEBSITES
1. http://www.marketingoasis.com/su/
2. http://mojo.skazat.com/
3. http://www.tincan.co.in.uk/phplist
4. http://infinite.ibasics.biz/
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing
The better the subject line of an e-mail, the better probability of being opened by the recipient. Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) Commercial e-mail, usually of an advertising nature, sent at the expense of the recipient without his or her permission. Sending UCE is an offense against all major ISPs’ terms of service, and is a crime in some jurisdictions.
