Email marketing – its powerful, generates sales and is very cost effective. Yet not many businesses are taking advantage of one of the most powerful tools they already have – their existing clients, and marketing to them via email.
With email marketing you can personalise each email ("Dear Fred"), highlight new products or services and invite the customer to visit your website to find out more. With more sophisticated campaigns you can track whether the emails have been opened, how many people have "clicked" on a link and what areas of your website they visited, thus providing vital statistics on how successful your campaign has been. At worst, if they don't read it at least they will see your logo.
There are many ways to conduct email marketing, from self managed to coordinated campaigns with an agency. However, the main points to consider when developing a campaign are:
Do not buy databases or share databases with other companies.
Be constant, i.e. don't send four emails one month, and none the next.
Make it short, with links to your site. If it's too long it won't get read.
Email marketing is like other advertising mediums – it costs money and time so make sure it's working.
Email marketing is here to stay – and compared to other mediums it delivers measurable results for a fraction of the price.
