What is Email Marketing ?
With the rapid invention of the Internet, Emailing has become one the most popular ways of communicating with others. Emailing is fast, inexpensive, and targets a lot of people at the same time. According to marketing schools, there were around ninety trillion emails sent worldwide and if you break it down, it would be around 2.8 million emails sent every second. These gigantic numbers show the massive popularity of email usage by the companies for advertising purposes. You might have also noticed that the impact of personal selling has been declined gradually. This is because now marketers have started targeting their audience by sending personal emails that mostly contains offers and discount coupons.
Let us understand the concept of Email Marketing now. Email Marketing is the method to reach customers directly through electronic email. Email marketing can be used to target only interested customers without actually spamming the customers. This happens when customers click the subscribe button to get regular emails about discounts and offers on the products they would like to buy. No matter what you are selling, you can send email to your customers and talk about your products. If you compare email marketing with other kinds of marketing, you will get to know the email marketing is a way cheaper advertising method than any other types of promotional strategies. Email marketing is not costly because it does not use paper and ink to print. You do not even have to rent a space on the website to show your commercials to the public. Email marketing can also capture the interest of the target audience through bright and colourful texts and graphics. You can also use email marketing to teach new customers about your products and make them aware about your brand. Thus, email marketing is a beneficial way of advertising about your products to customers.
Email marketing also gives you an opportunity to track the feedback about your advertisement campaigns from the targeted audience. You can check how many hits you received on your website after sending emails to thousands of people. It will help you to track the effectiveness of emailing targeted audience. You may have also noticed that many companies give options to unsubscribe from the website to stop getting emails about offers and discounts on products. This practice of unsubscribing helps both the company and customers. A company can only focus on those who have opted to subscribe and serve them better. Customers, who are not interested, can also avoid getting emails about the things they are not interested. Moreover, your company can also decide to ask for direct feedback from the customers by sending the customers surveys and forums. You can know your customers better and can also research about their likes and dislikes.
Nowadays companies are focusing more on digital marketing rather personal selling. Brands have started setting up profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Companies are also spending millions on email marketing efforts.
Listed below are some types of email marketing that marketers use -:
- Email Newsletters
These are regular emails that are sent to customers who have subscribed to the newsletters. The newsletters do not really contain offers and discount but talk more about the happenings in the company. They try to build a customer valued personal relationship with the customers by continuously trying to engage them in brand developing activities by sending event invitations.
- Transactional Emails
Transactional emails are sent when a customer makes an online order and confirms it. These emails can contain invoice or receipts and therefore customers pay attention to them. Studies show that transactional emails are opened more than any other kind of emails by the customers. Transactional emails are basically a proof for customers that they bought a product from the company.
- Direct Emails
Direct emails mainly teach customers about the products. They also contain sale offers, discounts, and coupons with price reduction information. A lot of people wait for direct emails from the company so that they can use the coupons later while making an online purchase.
Benefits of Email Marketing:-
Let us now discuss about the most profitable means of marketing,which is Email Marketing. Email marketing can provide more opportunities for your business to flourish because of the following reasons:
- Email targets a Major population
Nowadays everyone has an email address and an active social media account. People can easily check out the best deals though social media and direct emails from the company. As already mentioned above, companies can do a mass mailing to lure people with their new offers. They can also create awareness about their new products if they email a lot of people at a time. Email marketing provides a wider reach to the companies. Especially start-up companies can take advantage of low cost email marketing strategy and increase their brand equity. In short, Email marketing is quick, cheap, and emails can be sent to a lot of people in a short time.
- Email Marketing is focused and targeted
Earlier advertisements were placed on televisions and radios and were meant to be for everyone. There were no controls for the visibility of the advertisements. With the breakthrough of Email Marketing, you get the control of advertising. You get to decide that to whom you are going to send the emails about your products. You first need to segment your audience and then send the emails according to your audiences’ preferences. You do not need to send emails do those who are not interested to get emails from your company. Therefore, you can actually avoid spamming and serve better to those who are interested in your company.
- Emails have only your messages
As you send emails to your customers, you try to build a customer driven relationship with your targeted audience. The email you send only contains the message you want your customer to read. In contrast, televisions show advertisements of same products by different brands that can easily result into switching from one brand to another brand by the customers. Through emails, you can avoid switching brand by your targeted audience and focus on customer retention. You can give exclusive offers to your customers and urge them to become a member for more benefits.
- Email Marketing boosts Brand Equity
One of the major factors of increasing brand equity is to increase the brand awareness. Sometimes, you would like to teach the audience about your new products. Especially about newly innovated products that audience do not really know. Through email marketing, you can send newsletters and direct emails with sales offer to educate your audience about your products. You can also build profitable relationships with your audience by asking them for feedback. In this way, you can easily and quickly increase your brand awareness that can boost up your brand equity.
- Email Marketing can be measured
As already mentioned above, Email marketing can instantly check the effectiveness of your advertisement Campaign. You can check how many hits you have received after sending the emails to your target audience. Email Marketing also gives you an opportunity to delivery rates, open rates, click-to-deliver rates, and subscriber retention rates. Through these numbers, you can check the interest and behaviours of your customers.
- Email Marketing helps in conversions
When you email your customers emails about news sales offers, it can induce your customers’ minds and make them to buy your products. You should always use eye catchy headlines along with bright, colourful info graphics and texts to attract your customers. Eventually, email marketing can turn impending customers into instant buying customers.
- Email will be around there for a long time
Unlike television, radio, and newspaper advertisements, Emails can stay in your inbox forever. You can even Google about the specific information contained in the email. Emailing has been growing consistently and it is going to be more frequent in future too. Therefore, investing in email marketing is a beneficial method of flourishing your Business.
Many marketers have agreed that Email marketing has turned into becoming a successful strategy for prospering one’s business. This has happened due to the rapid expansion of Internet usage. Thanks to the efforts of technicians and marketers who have developed the idea Email Marketing. Email Marketing clearly outperforms other types of promotional strategies. A lot of e-commerce sites like Ebay, Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, and Snapdeal send continuous emails about their product offers and persuade their targeted customers to buy the products.
Since the demonetization of notes, Our Prime Minister is also trying to make India go cashless and increase the use of DigiDhan. People are widely following Prime Minister’s efforts and opting to go completely digital. Marketers can use this golden opportunity to boost email marketing as people will now prefer using e-wallet. As people will use more of e-wallet now, they will be more attentive towards online sales offers and promo codes sent by the marketers though personal emails. Hence, Email Marketing has truly been proven the best way to get connected with your customers.
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