The quirks and necessities of email marketing to get you started

In recent times, social networking has gained surplus popularity in acting a means of interaction between people. Almost all big companies are vehemently using it as a way to reach across to its customers and users. With the plethora of options available to be used, the utility of email marketing is often overlooked. However ask any successful blogger and he will never cease to stress the importance of it in order to achieve online success. So let’s see what exactly constitutes email marketing.

Introduction to Email Marketing

Before seeing why it’s important, let’s get a basic understanding of what exactly is email marketing. Email marketing refers to the process of directly marketing an email to the group of people who have signed up at your blog or website to receive the updates you post. In a broad spectrum, every e-mail sent to an existing or a potential customer can be classified as email marketing. One must keep in mind that, it is much more than just simply throwing random sales pitches at people who have signed up for your newsletters. You have to use it responsibly and thoughtfully taking into account the potential of it as an effective communication channel.

More personal than Social Media

In today’s world people may consider Social Media to be the most effective way to reach across to your customers. Although not everyone in the planet is on Facebook or Twitter. But the chances of the same person having an E-mail address are relatively much higher.

There are numerous methods to make a database of customers’ email addresses. The most common way is to take their email ID during account creation or with a customized form solely for the purpose of a newsletter subscription. The email address is always paired with the First and Last name to make customer identification easier.

Sending out your email newsletters with the names of the customer gives it a higher sense of personalness and individuality. You can also employ methods of progressive profiling to effectively give the customer what he wants and extract the information you desire from them.

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Enables you to contact serious clients 

It is kind of fairly obvious that people who wish to hear from you will definitely aid in improving your business. Email marketing allows this to be done by making users reconfirm their willingness by clicking a link in their respective e-mail id’s . This method of double verification ensures that users confirm the legitimacy of their id’s themselves.

Also by clicking the link that e-mail, that user is effectively allowing you to contact them back. Although care must be taken to ensure that you don’t reach their spam list. You must periodically send them updates but not so frequent that they get irritated. This can compel them to commence ignoring your e-mails or worse unsubscribe you from their list. The best and most sought after method is to send weekly newsletters.

Effective Feedback System

Email marketing acts as a highly effective system for obtaining feedback from the users. The primary source of insights you can get from it is through open rates. Open Rates are defined as the percentage of users who have actually opened the email you sent. A very useful strategy in increasing open rates is to incorporate catchy and intriguing subject lines. You have to know what to say and how to say it in order to grab the attention of your audience.

This is the first test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.Another measuring standard is the Click Through Rate. The Click Through Rate is a measure of the percentage of people who have clicked a link that was present in the e-mail body. It is a very effective way of measuring the number of seriously interested users who care enough to go through not only the mail but also the content provided in it. Having access to such types of measurement standards helps you to effectively keep tabs on what is or isn’t working in your marketing initiatives.

To Sum it up

The strength and utility of Email Marketing is often overshadowed by the mass appeal factor of Social Networking sites. However in reality emails are more capable in reaching to a broader demographic of audience. Emails have the following salient features –

• It allows for a quick, direct channel of communication and can be considered as the most efficient and moldable channel online.
• It is the best method used to deliver condensed, high-impact messages, which may also contain links to more detailed or specific content.
• An interested audience will always prefer to receive information from an organization that they trust. The permission-based approach ensures that the users are genuinely interested and will assist in making a useful contribution in development of the same.

It may be assumed that email marketing being such a powerful and influencing channel will be an expensive strategy. Definitely there will be a significant initial setup cost. However once the foundation is setup, periodic maintenance will cost minimal compared to the returns it will generate.