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An email marketing truth

If you plan on doing some Internet marketing to promote a business – products, services and/or brand – email marketing should be one strategy that merits serious consideration, if not the main strategy of your Web marketing campaign. Unfortunately many business owners shy away from email marketing based on a misguided assumption that all email marketing campaigns are purely spam. However, this assumption cannot be farther from the truth; and the failure of any business to employ this marketing strategy can result in substantial revenue loss for that business.

Appealing to potential customers via email is a marketing strategy that, when used properly and appropriately, can enhance the balance sheet of any business; while failure to embrace this powerful resource will deprive your business of needed exposure, strategic market share and valuable customer base which, in effect, is the same as ceding such powerful business-building components to competitors who are, in fact, using email marketing campaigns to reach customers around the world. So if you are a business owner who has not incorporate email marketing into your overall marketing strategy, but intends to do so at some future date, it may be a good idea that you start familiaring yourself with the process now.

That having been said, however, the first step in putting an email marketing campaign into effect, should be to create an email subscriber list; a process this article will discuss, to include a few popular options for getting started, and this and should help the reader to learn more about what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to email marketing.

First and foremost

Once you have made the decision to start using email marketing to promote your business, you’ll likely be confronted with the dilemma of compiling an email subscriber list, which is essentially a list of email addresses to which you will email your advertising and promotional materials. One popular way to obtain a list of email addresses is to purchase it from any number of list distributors available on the Web. However, this method may not be very effective at all and we do not recommend it, because when purchasing an email list you really have no way of knowing whether or not those list members would have any interest at all in your products or services.

This is very important because while you want to reach a large audience through your email marketing efforts, you also want this audience to be well-matched with your overall target audience. Furthermore, when you purchase an email list you may be sending your email messages to users who might be interested, but even this unlikely possibility is largely coincidental and therefore may not be well received since the message was not solicited. Internet users are very quick to delete material they believe to be spam without even opening or reading the emails. In fact some Internet service providers (ISPs) include spam filters which may automatically delete your emails if your messages are deemed to be spam.

ISPs like Comcast, AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo, among many others, utilize filters that run complex algorithms on the subject heading and content of the message to determine whether or not it is spam; and they are quite adept at weeding out spam. Therefore you run the risk of having your email marketing effort turn out to be a complete waste if the majority of recipients never even read or receive the message.

The value of email marketing

A far better way to create an email subscriber list for your email marketing campaign is to ask current customers as well as interested website visitors and potential customers to register with your website in order to receive additional information and periodic updates about your products and services, as well as other information which might be of interest to them. This provides you with a database of email addresses from current customers as well as potential customers who have a genuine interest in your products and services; and who are interested in learning more about these products and services.

Once you have a list of interested customers or potential customers, you can send emails or create e-newsletter for distribution to the members of your email list. These documents should contain a wealth of valuable information, as well as a soft sell pitch for your products and services. This information may also be of value to readers and could help to persuade them to try your products and services. You might also want to include useful links to either your website, or other websites that may be of interest to your readers. Additionally, your content should also contain a portion which urges readers to take a specific action such as making a purchase or, at least, investigating a product further.

Avoid alienating customers

Many who are familiar with, or actively engage in, Web marketing will agree that there is a very fine line between legitimate ads and spam; but what makes this distinction so alarming is the fact that many business owners – online and offline – do not understand the difference between the two. In view of this lack of understanding, it is therefore important that marketers have the ability to identify spam and avoid it at all costs; because while a clever, well planned Web marketing campaign can help to attract new customers and keep existing customers loyal, spam is likely to alienate both new and existing customers, which can be extremely damaging to profit margins for the business owners.

That having been said, we will take a closer look at the grey area between ads and spam while touching on a number of Web marketing strategies, including email marketing campaigns and banner ads as well as message board posts, and describe how each can quickly cross the line from clever advertising to spam.

Email marketing campaigns

Email marketing campaigns are very useful tools in an industry like Web marketing, since these campaigns are comprised of the most important means of communication between the marketer and his/her client and/or customer base. Included in such campaigns might be periodic e-newsletters consisting of information requested by subscribers along with advertisements, brief educational email courses and/or offers of discounts on products and services. Loyal customers who opt into the marketer’s email list will likely not view these emails as spam and may purchase additional products and services from the marketer’s business which will justify this kind of marketing strategy.

Additionally, potential customers who have specifically requested additional information about the marketer’s products and services will also find this type of marketing to be useful. But email recipients who did not request information from the marketer are likely to view these emails as spam, which brings us to one of the key points in differentiating between advertising and spamming. It is the difference between those who “requested” information and receive the marketing emails; and those who “did not request” information, but still receive marketing emails.

Simply put, emails to those in the “request” category are considered legitimate advertising, while emails to those in the “did not request” category are considered spam. In view of this distinction, it can be said with some certainty that harvesting email addresses in a deceptive manner and using these addresses to send out mass emails will likely be considered spam in ninety out of ten times.

Banner advertising

Banner ads have for a long time been considered among the most popular strategies utilized by Web marketers, including email marketing professionals, because they are the types of ads that can be placed atop most websites and span the width of those sites. In fact, this placement is directly related to how they earned the name “banner ads,” but actually banner ads can refer to ads of a variety of sizes, shapes and colors that appear in an array of different locations on a website. Business owners have been known to purchase advertising space on various websites, but the banner ad may also be utilized as part of an exchange or an affiliate marketing campaign.

The most popular kind of banner ad exchanges is when business owner #1 places a banner ad from business owner #2 on his/her website in exchange for business owner #2 placing a banner ad from business owner #1 on his/her website. These agreements may be made individually between business owners with comparable businesses, or as part of exchanges facilitated by a third party or network. In the case of affiliate marketing, an affiliate places an advertisement for a particular business (often referred to as a merchant) in exchange for compensation when the banner ad produces a desired effect such as traffic to the merchant’s website or generating a sale.

Terms of advertising

The terms of banner exchange agreements, as well as affiliate agreements are determined beforehand and are generally based on a scale of pay per impression, pay per click or pay per sale or lead. Now that you understand what banner ads are, it is also important to understand how they can be overused and give the appearance that they are spam. If you are a Web marketer who advertises with banners, you might judiciously place your banner ad on a few websites which are likely to attract an audience similar to your target audience, and this will be seen as smart marketing; but placing your banner ad on any website which will display the ad regardless of the target audience can be construed as spam.

In advertising, whether it may be offline or online, must always be done with the audience in mind; and in the case of marketing on the Web, your audience is the many Internet users who will decide whether your ads are legitimate or spam; because if they sense that your banner ads are everywhere they turn, and are being placed indiscriminately on any and every website who will accept them, they will likely not take your business seriously and would probably not purchase products or services from you as a result of your banner placement activity.

About message boards

Message boards provide an excellent opportunity for business owners to obtain some free advertising where it will be noticed by members of the target audience; and if the products and services you offer appeal to a specific niche, it is worthwhile to join message boards and online forums related to your industry of choice, which will allow you locate a large population of Internet users who may have an interest in your products. As a result of your membership in such a program, you might consider including a link to your business in your signature area, or post the link when it is applicable to the conversation.

However, be mindful of the kind of promotional activities you engage in by carefully reviewing the message board guidelines so that you can be certain that your activities are not in violation of those guidelines, and that you are not engaging in any inappropriate behavior. Message board advertising is a smart marketing strategy, but you could run afoul of best practices by replying to every message with a link to your website, especially when it is not relevant to the conversation since this can be construed as spam by other members. And once they begin to view your posts as spam, they are not likely to visit your website via any links you post.