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Is email marketing right for your business?
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by K.E.Lubrecht
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3 September 2003
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Each morning we open our email to check for messages from clients, potential customers, and friends, as well as update ourselves through newsletters, mailing lists and such. The plethora of items necessitates the use of filters to organize our inbox and help with prioritization. Messages from clients need to be handled expediently, while the latest tip for the business may be able to wait until later in the day, or even the next day, when we have more time. ISP's now flag what they consider spam and may not deliver it, or the recipient may mark spam tagged messages to be trashed without even checking the subject. Does that mean that email has lost its effectiveness as a marketing technique?
Collecting email addresses from your current and prospective clients with their permission allows for opt in or out email, providing news about latest releases, sales and specials. This can be done through plain or rich text formats providing passive or active targeted links to the company site, so that they can quickly find the information they want, and perhaps be encouraged to wander through the site for related topics. This always leads to the possibility that they will take advantage of an advertisement, thus improving the option of raising the price of banner ad space on the site, and hopefully use the goods or services provided by the owner of the site. Since the customer has opted into the email, they should allow it through the filters, so that a well written message makes the email marketing worthwhile.
This email may be sent on a regular basis as a newsletter or the newsletter may be provided in another format from the site. Once again the emailed newsletter can still be effective as plain or rich text as opposed to the HTML versions that require so much space in the recipient's mailbox. Download time is another consideration that is often overlooked. Just as the slower connection speeds of many customers may drive them from your site, the email download time may cause frustrations if the customer has to wait for an important message and your email is stalling the process. Just because your design staff is on DSL doesn't mean that your customer is. For that matter, they may not be able to view that Flash email ad!
If you choose to gather your own email addresses, consider how they will be stored and used. You need to provide your customers with a privacy statement. Beyond that, you need to attempt to insure that their data is safe and being used as you stated. Are you using temporary help? Are you using wireless connections? Security is only as good as your weakest unit.
If you choose to use an email service, be sure to ask how they are going to deal with the problems addressed at the beginning of this article. How do they gather the email addresses and validate them? How do they determine the target market? What kind of return can you expect on your investment?
Is email marketing right for your business? According to The World Factbook 2002 published on the CIA web site, there were 166 million Internet users as of 2001. With that many people on-line, email provides connection to a large market. It can certainly cut mailing costs and easily tie into your web site and marketing plan. Like the rest of your marketing plan, it needs to be personalized to your situation with an eye to the problems that your customers bring to the table, but it is definitely not a delivery media to be ignored.
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K.E. Lubrecht has been in website development since 1997. Prior to that, she worked as a teacher. She holds a bachelors degree in physics with a related field of mathematics, and graduate work in education. In addition, she holds webmaster certification. Her education has continued as technology has advanced, and needs and interests have warranted. |
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