It’s not Spam – Modern Email Marketing

Posted by admin on 12 February 2010

Tags: email marketing

Email marketing is sometimes considered to be the third rail of online marketing techniques – any company that touches it will suffer.  With the glut of offensive and email server choking spam messages that pervaded the internet in earlier years, and still do to some extent, it is easy to understand why marketers are nervous to go down the email path.  Yet, the benefits of email advertising are so alluring that many are tempted to do so anyway.  Contemporary customer relationship management techniques along with advanced blacklisting and spam filtering software are enabling a new generation of email marketers to target customers precisely, quickly, and, most important, profitably.  This post discusses some of the perils and benefits of using email to target customers and provides information on how prospective email marketers can follow a middle ground that will target customers without raising the spectre of the dreaded “S” word.

While the spam pandemic is still a visible scar on the face of email marketing, it is important to consider the unique qualities of email that make it a powerful way to establish and maintain customer contact.  First, email is fast.  Whereas a postal mailing may take days or weeks to reach its recipient, email makes it to the inbox in a matter of seconds.  Second, email is, to some extent, traceable.  It is possible to track when emails are read, if links within the message are clicked, if the email is forwarded, etc.  Finally, email marketing is inexpensive.  Even if only a small percentage of targeted consumers respond favourably to an email advertisement, the cost of deploying an email campaign is so low that even a relatively tiny response rate can be highly profitable.

What differentiates modern, responsible email marketing from the horrendous carpet bombing spam tactics employed by some less scrupulous advertisers is how the target customer base is selected.  Spam techniques employ email harvesting and attempt to reach the highest number of targets possible, regardless of whether they have any pre-existing relationship with the company doing the advertisements or if they have specifically opted out of receiving email marketing.  A responsible email campaign uses several criteria to select the target base.  First, anyone receiving the message should have a relationship with the company.  This relationship can take the form of a past purchaser, someone who has asked for more information, or someone who has otherwise expressed a desire to receive marketing messages from the entity in question.  Second, the customer should have specifically agreed to receive email marketing messages.  The requirement, referred to as “opting in” is a vital requirement to conducting a responsible email marketing campaign.

Technology has done its part to bring email marketing back from the brink.  Spam filters and black listing services are highly sophisticated these days, and customers are no longer as wary as they once were to open marketing email messages.  It is up to the marketers to continue this trend of increasing customer trust by remaining vigilant about marketing only to those who are open to receiving the messages.

Email marketing, when undertaken carefully and respectfully, is a fantastically powerful way of reaching consumers. The modern email marketer knows the importance of respecting customer wishes with regards to receiving email marketing messages.