| Email Marketing |
| Email marketing is the most common and the easiest of all means of online advertising. This means it is highly effective because it approaches the customer directly. But in this era of high usage of email, this form of marketing suffers from both sets of advantages and disadvantages.
Email marketing has been aptly remarked as a form of direct marketing where in a prospective customer is sent a direct mail. Now email marketing is used for a couple of purposes. Emails are sent to a customer to keep him updated about the product, service or company. This helps to maintain a balanced relation between the customer and the company and ensure circulation of good name and future business prospects with the customer. In this case email marketing is used to maintain an already existing customer.
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Emails are also sent to make new customer. Email addresses are collected through various means or trackbacks and then email is sent to them as a promotion of a particular product. Email tries to convince the customer about the utility of the product, giving him URL of the parent website.
Disadvantage with email marketing is increase of spam. With many people misusing this process to send spam mails often attaching virus to disturb or hack the computer system, people have become immensely conservative about them. There are notices and news from time to time, asking people not to open mails or attachments that they are not sure of. In such a scenario, sending email to a new customer becomes difficult because it gets automatically transferred to Spam folder and is deleted. Many people do not open an unknown email due to fear of virus. Having said that, email marketing has not lost all its charm, though, it definitely had a set back due to this.
There are certain rules to effective email marketing that helps to get the advertisement through in an effective way. It is best to address an email personally. An impersonal may neither be opened nor will it have a good impression. First line of the email makes the impression. In this fast world, no user has time to read an email completely if his attention is not grasped in the very first look. So spend good amount of time in designing and planning that line and it will definitely fetch you good results.
It is said that email marketing campaign should be avoided during holiday and festival months because people usually do not check their mails regularly during this time and when they check accumulated mails, chances of advertisement emails to be seen is remote.
The email for advertisement should be crisp and clear. Avoid flowery or confusing language. Just state it plain and simple. Explain in clear terms what the user needs to do next, like giving a URL to follow in bold. The path should be clear and self explanatory. Do not use exclamation marks or high flying words; remember you are targeting a common man who has less than a minute to decide about the fate of your email. An unimpressive email will be immediately trashed while an impressive mail on the other hand will fetch good business.
Email marketing is a comparatively cheaper and more practical option. All you need is to design and process it carefully to reach your target audience.
