Email Marketing
Overview
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. It is an effective way to stay connected with your clients while also promoting your business. Email marketing can be carried out through different types of emails like transactional emails, direct emails, and mobile email marketing.
History
The concept of email marketing began in the 1970s when Gary Thuerk, a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp, sent the first mass email to approximately 400 potential clients via the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). This email resulted in $13 million worth of sales in DEC products, and highlighted the potential of marketing through mass emails.
Types of Email Marketing
There are three main types of email marketing: transactional emails, direct emails, and mobile email marketing.
Transactional Emails
Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customer's action with a company. Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status emails, reorder emails and email receipts.
Direct Emails
Direct emails involve sending an email solely to communicate a promotional message. Companies usually collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional messages to.
Mobile Email Marketing
Email marketing develops large amounts of traffic through smartphones and tablets. Marketers are researching ways to advertise to more users and to make them view advertising for longer.
Advantages of Email Marketing
Email marketing allows marketers to see feedback from users in real time, and to monitor how effective their campaign is in achieving market penetration and helps to reveals how wide or narrow a communication channel is. At the same time, it also means that the more personal and relevant the email is to the client, the more information they will digest.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Despite the advantages, there are also many disadvantages to email marketing. The rate at which the emails are opened, known as the open rate, is one of the primary measurement metrics. The open rate is influenced by how much customers trust the sender, how often they receive emails, and if they find the content relevant or interesting.
Legal Requirements
Email marketing carries the risk of several legal issues, particularly in regards to spam, privacy and digital rights. For example, in the United States, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 establishes national standards for direct marketing over e-mail. The Federal Trade Commission Act regulates all forms of advertising, including online advertising, and states that advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive.