eMail Lists: Vital to Web Marketing Campaigns

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.