Email Marketing

Email marketing is the tool you need to build customer loyalty. Until now the effectiveness of marketing tools (newspaper ads, radio spots, flyers, TV ads) is difficult to measure except in the broadest terms. For small and home based businesses the cost of these conventional tools is very high. In contrast Email marketing is cheap, measurable and fast.

Yes people still read email – when it is from a retail or online store or people they know and like. Despite the challenges of spam and legitimate emails trapped by spam filters, companies manage to generate millions of dollars of profit every year using email marketing software. In a recent study conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, email has seen an 80% increase in ad revenue over the past year!

eMarketer reports that email generates a much higher return on spending than methods such as direct mail and newspaper and radio advertising.

If you think that email marketing is dead, think again.

Your challenge is to send out relevant emails that people will open without hesitating. As you build lists of email addresses segment the names into areas of interest. Ensure that the emails you send target those specific interests. How do you know that you’ve done this successfully? Check the detailed statistics that your email package maintains – how many people opened your email, how many people clicked on your link to a coupon, clicked on your “hot items” list and of course – did your sales improve? If your results are lower than average, think of how you could improve one thing. Improve it for the next email. Watch the results. Are your click-through results higher? Tweek another aspect of the email. Watch the results. Do these things right and you’ll be able to profit from email marketing.