Introduction to E-Mail Marketing - Part 1 of 3

posted by WEBSITES.COM // March 18, 2009 // Market Your Website

Consider these three facts about American email usage in 2005. A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 53% of Americans consider email less trustworthy due to spam. A study by the email security company Postini found that in March of 2005, a full 87% of all email messages sent were spam. Yet a survey conducted by Opinion Research Corp. found that the average email user has three email accounts and spends almost one hour every day reading and sending email messages.

Based on these findings, it is reasonable to draw a few conclusions:

• Americans want to use email as a communication tool, but they are frustrated by the high levels of spam they receive.
• It is easy for legitimate commercial email messages to be lost, accidentally deleted, or simply remain unviewed among the deluge of spam in your customers' in-boxes.
• Your email marketing must be personalized, focused, relevant, enticing, and unique to be seen.

In the past several years, spam has become so endemic that the U.S. Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act, a set of laws governing how businesses can send commercial email. Adhering to the Act is vitally important for your business. Editor's note: See related article The CAN-SPAM Act and What You Need to Know.

Advantages of Email Marketing

Used correctly, email can be a powerful marketing tool for increasing brand recognition, increasing sales, driving traffic to your website, and building and maintaining customer relationships. Some of the advantages of email over more traditional marketing methods include:

• Inexpensive: You may need to spend some money on designing your text- and HTML-based email pieces, but you can eliminate paper, printing, manufacturing, and shipping costs.
• Fast: An email piece can be created very quickly, and many of your customers will receive it within 30 seconds of it being sent. Likewise, response time is very fast: 80% of customers who respond to an email piece do so within 48 hours of receiving it.
• Targeted Audience: Email enables you to send targeted messages to specific segments of your customer base. Research shows that personalizing an email greatly increases the chance that your customer will read it; it also increases the chance they will follow your call to action.
• Verifiable Results: Like no other marketing vehicle, email enables you to immediately measure many types and degrees of customer reaction to your campaign. You can measure how many customers open your email, how many click on a link in it, and how many ultimately purchase a product or take any other action suggested in the message.

These are some of the many advantages of email marketing. In part 2 of this series, we will explain how to launch a successful email marketing campaign.

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Article Source: Verio

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