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You got a mail! Email is used as either primary or secondary tool in new marketing era. Email is used starting from letter of introduction to follow up projects. Few companies have got specialization of generating business through email campaign. This is nothing but simply Email Marketing.

What is Email Marketing?

It is cost effective, immediate, self evaluator, responsible, environmental friendly and easy available direct marketing tool. Email marketing is marketing through Email.

1. Email marketing is cheap and secure.
2. Sender immediately able to know whether recipient has received or not
3. Sender easily can evaluate his business. I got ten positive replies out of fifteen requests I did.
4. Surveys have found that email-marketing campaigns can be as much as 10 times more likely
    to generate a response as their direct mail. You are half way sure to receive response with
    this tool.
5. Email facility is easily available.

Shaping your business strategies:

1. You directly contact your targeted segment.
2. You meet your customers with your all-attractive materials in just seconds.
3. You give best recall with pleasant mail.
4. You send your newsletter, which is very crucial for your customers to know about you.
5. You put your advertisements with other newsletters, which are targeted, to your customers.

There are three basic forms of email marketing.

A. Direct email

What do you send your customers or prospective customers in your traditional marketing? Promotional message? Offer announcement? What do you need for that? You need a list of customer or prospect postal addresses to send your promotions. In same way you need list of email addresses of your customers so that they can read your promotional message and offers on their computers or laptops. It doesn’t matter where they are! You can also rent lists of email addresses from service companies. They'll let you send your message to their own address lists. These services can usually let you target your message according to, for example, the interests or geographical location of the owners of the email address. So start creating email address database or hire such firms.

B. Be in Touch Mail

What would you do to be in touch with your prospective or well-established customers? You send retention kind of mails or your official newsletter. A newsletter carries promotional messages or advertisements. But it aims at developing a long-term impact on the readers (Your customers). It contains information, which informs, entertains or otherwise benefits the readers. You don’t do extra now. You have official newsletter ready with you. You just create attractive automation through web-based technologies. And send it through your mailbox. This is what we call e-Newsletter.

C. Advertise through other e-newsletter

Instead of producing your own e-newsletter, you can find newsletters published by others and pay them to put your advertisement in the emails they send their subscribers. Indeed, there are many email newsletters that are created for just this purpose - to sell advertising space to others. Here you are advertising and promoting your company and not sharing your valuable knowledge. However that also can be done.

Challenges for Email Marketer

1. Spam. (Uninvited Guest)

I daily clean up advertising material thrown in my house veranda. Same way I get some emails that I have never invited. Such unauthorized mails and unsolicited commercial (bulk) email are called " SPAM". Spam however results only in angry recipients. Even ISPs (Internet Service Providers) may block your domain also. Spamming is called "Untargeted Email Marketing".

So please don’t Spam. Take permission of receivers while you send your mail. This is called "Responsible email marketing". How to get permission? An example of permission is when your customer buys something from your online store and also ticks a box marked "please send me news about product updates via email". You now have "permission" to send that person product updates by email, provided you also give them the opportunity to rescind that permission at any time.

2. Privacy issues

" Company needs to get permission from the individuals concerned before sending bulk emails to customers." - Data Protection Act. UK. Spam is the issue of privacy. So, maintain God’s privacy.

3. Attachments

Try to avoid large attachments while mailing. If you want to promote information try to convert into Newsletter. E- newsletter is a tool where you link important web pages under good heading. While reading, if your customers find important to read, they will open those pages.

Another funny reason not to send attachments during your direct e-marketing campaigns is that often recipients are unable to open them for one reason or another. So don’t send anything, which becomes dirt for someone else when reached.

Become a responsible email marketer

1. Don’t send mail to them who don’t know anything about you.
2. Include your name and correspondence address to prove your validity in mail.
3. If any one complains or find objection on your sending mail, please follow up and try to avoid
    such mailing.
4. Stop collecting email addresses from Internet so that you can promote yourself to that
    address. Get your email address in permitted manner. Mail to interested only and for that  
    collect addresses of interested only.
5. Hire such advertisers only who are really not Spammer and send valid emails on behalf of 
    you.
6. Don’t send mails one after other even if you do not get response from recipient.
7. Don’t mail any illegal or fake information.
8. Go for "Opt-in" email marketing. However it is not the free but it works. Bulletmail and 
    Hotmail are well known opt in email marketer.

Manage your solutions. Here is a brief detail of some specialist in this field.

A. Ezine Marketing

An ezine is simply an electronic magazine or newsletter sent out periodically to a list of Opt In subscribers. Opt In means they have voluntarily signed-up to receive your ezine and were not added to the list without their knowledge or permission. Not only do you reach your target audience, you reach them by the thousands. Of all the online marketing methods available, ezine advertising could be the most effective. (Source: www.e-inez.com)

C. Topica

It is a free service that allows you to find, manage and participate in email lists and discussion groups. Discussion group marketing works because the posts are delivered directly TO a targeted audience. Topica offers all common interest discussion groups like Art, Books, Movies, Developers, Food and drink, Music, Finance, Business, Travels and family etc. You can start such own discussion group also.
Email Marketer. May Planner help you?

For every thing you have to plan in advance. Likewise you start planning your email marketing campaign also.

What do need to ponder?

1. Who is your customer? Who is your targeted audience? To whom do you want to send?
    Definitely you will send to your customers. How? You need either your won email list or you
    need to get on rental. Collect addresses. If you take on rent, select trusted medium.
2. Why do you want to send email? What do your customer read in your e newsletter? What
    actions do they need to take? Registering, Downloading or Buying?
3. If your campaign gets big success, what will be your outcome from this exercise? Be very  
    specific here. Quantify it.
4. How your newsletter will benefit your customer? Are you offering gift, knowledge or 
    discounts inside?
5. What Is Your Budget?
6. Hire copywriter and designer who can do creative job for your campaign.
7. You need to send your email recipients to a website that describes your offer or prompts
    them to take action. This site is also called a landing page. Get it developed or get on rent. 
   And give that address in your newsletter.
8. Will You Use HTML or TEXT in your mail? HTML may give your mail more attraction.

Thus how e-mail and newsletters provide you with the means of taking your business message to your target audience, rather than having to wait for your target audience to come to you.