E-mail has long been a key part of the internet and the huge majority of people who use the internet will have at least one, but usually a couple, of e-mail accounts. It’s very true that there are now alternatives for people that want to communicate online, notably social media, but when it comes to certain kinds of correspondence e-mail still leads the way.
The sheer ubiquity of e-mail presents an obvious opportunity to businesses. This opportunity is e-marketing. Put simply, and e-marketing is about reaching out to customers or would-be customers via the medium of e-mail. Of course the nuances of an e-mail marketing campaign will be very sophisticated and complex, and you might benefit from the help of an email marketing campaign.
But don’t emails filter out these kinds of marketing correspondence? Not quite. It’s certainly true that e-mail providers such as Gmail filter out lots and lots of spam mails, but these are different to high quality correspondence such as newsletters or special offers. To avoid your correspondence being marked as spam you need to ensure it’s well written, perhaps personalised for users etc.
For obvious reasons, simply firing off e-mails to random addresses is not an effective strategy. Instead, your e-mails need to be targeted not only in terms of personalisation etc, but also in regards to who you send them. Essentially, you should correspond with your main demographics, for example existing or previous customers.
