Advice Online

At its most basic level, email marketing can be viewed as connecting with your target audience using email. This can be distinguished from the use of postal mail, marketing via telephone, selling in person, websites, radio, and television. It should also be noted that email marketing can be employed along with any or all of these mediums and in practice is often complementary to many of them.

Marketing using email is merely writing directly to a particular group of your target audience, to be specific, those who have provided you with specific permission to communicate with them via email. By specific permission, to be clear what is referred to is the action of clicking on a link that identifies the reader’s intention to receive future information from you. In the case of a double optin list, the reader also must confirm his or her subscription by clicking on the link in a confirmation email sent their email address for that purpose.

It should be clear that email marketing should not automatically be labeled “spam”; i.e. unwanted commercial email. When email lists are managed as they should be, the recipient requests to be added to the email list, and in addition, every email they receive contains a mechanism for unsubscribing.

What are the contents of email marketing communications?

Generally, email marketing will include the following:

Industry news. Let’s say you are marketing to fanciers of Shetland ponies. In that case, you may want to discuss recent and upcoming events relevant to Shetland pony breeders and enthusiasts. This will help position you as a leader in your field, someone whom your readers can trust.

Helpful tips and hints. One common use of email marketing is to provide introductory level training. A great example would be sending out a short course via email on how to get started playing the guitar. Or you could merely address one issue that new guitar players often struggle with.

Sales messages. No surprise here. Marketers want to sell something! The precise “most desired action” will be different based upon on your industry and positioning within in. In other words, you may not be offering something for sale immediately, but you will almost always be giving your readers the opportunity to move farther down the sales funnel.

Common encouraged actions of email sales messages include:

* Visit a sales page (your own or another marketers’)

* Call a phone number for information package

* Participating in a complimentary teleseminar

Commercial bulk emails can be classified as “broadcast” messages or “sequential” messages. The latter are often labeled “autoresponders” for the fact that process behind including a subscriber to your list is automated, and in addition, the system keeps track of when to send follow up messages.