If you think email marketing services are just a modern re-creation of old-school mass mailing, think about the strategy from the distribution side of the communication. Mass mailing works by no greater strategy than knowing street addresses – completely public information – and assuming that consumers are a “Resident” of that address.
The upside of a mass-mailing marketing strategy is that the recipient knows that they may likely have no personal relationship with your business; it’s a straight-forward, typically honest attempt to attract attention to your business products and services. If you have any measurement at all regarding the success of the mailing campaign, it is that you can measure the response in terms of increased traffic to your door, and you know that the balance of the mailers were round-filed. Expectations fulfilled, if not entirely satisfactory.
Email marketing, by contrast, requires a little more digging by marketing strategists; you must obtain email addresses, not quite as readily available as street addresses. However, they are available, and they are typically purchased from enterprises that have collected customer email addresses by their own willingness to give them.
If your business provides automobile cleaning and waxing supplies, and you purchase a list of consumer email addresses from popular car wash facilities in several locations with large customer bases, you may develop a campaign that can target consumers who already express an interest in the appearance of their vehicles; a ready-made, potentially focused market.
Now that you have the contacts, what do you do with them for the greatest success with your marketing strategy? Email marketing services should be easily employed, expand the reach of your campaign, personalize the message, allow measurement of response and, finally, costs effectively sell your product or service.
1. Easy to Employ
Once you have obtained email addresses of a targeted consumer base, and you have developed a “wow” campaign structured to email format (which can include text, graphics, audio and video content, and a combination of these media), just merge content with addresses and send. Instant distribution and virtually instant reception. Sit back and wait for response, but don’t get too comfortable; now the work must begin to close the sales.
2. Expand the Reach
Your email marketing is not necessarily limited to local consumers. In fact, the advantage of providing a product (and some services) via email marketing is that you and your potential customers need not be in the same city or even on the same continent.
3. Personalize the Message
Match customer need for a related product or service they already use.
4. Measure Response
You can collect response data not just in terms of numbers of sales, but with social media techniques applied, you can also gauge why and how consumers respond, whether they like your product or not. This knowledge will help future product development.
5. Cost Effective Sales
The purchase of email addresses, or by free, direct provision of them from potential consumers, and the expense of distribution by email is less expensive than traditional mass mailing, while cost of development of the campaign itself is a wash, and potentially less expensive than traditional marketing development techniques.