Email Marketing 101 eCourse Lesson 1
Saturday, May 21st 2011 @ 2:28 PM (not yet rated)
What is e-mail marketing?
As its name suggests, email marketing is the method businesses use of marketing to their prospects and customers through email. (For the purposes of this e-course, we call "prospects" the people who have never bought from you and "customers" the people who have bought from you... although sometimes it gets redundant to say that. In general, we may refer to one or the other but mean both and if we want to highlight one of those groups, we'll let you know. Some businesses only market to prospects, others only market to customers, and some market to both).
And, for the purposes of this e-course, we are referring to your email messages as sales messages and to your audience as prospects and customers... but that doesn't mean that only for-profit organizations can use it! On the contrary, many non-profit organizations use these same ideas too. The only difference is in semantics... otherwise, everything else (including how you write the message) is exactly the same.
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What types of email marketing are there?
Generally speaking, there are two types of email marketing.
· Unsolicited.
· Permission-based.
Let's look at each of these right now.
Unsolicited email marketing
Unsolicited email marketing is generally referred to as "spam." Spam is a huge and growing concern on the Internet because of the amount of time it wastes: it fills drive space, it's a vehicle for scams and viruses, and it reduces productivity. More importantly (from a business stand-point) it increases the amount of "clutter" in someone's inbox and thereby reduces a prospect's or customer's appreciation of your sales message... even if it's important.
We do not endorse spam-style email marketing.
Spam marketing is largely ineffective and is one of the things that have become a hassle on the Internet. We want to promote an enjoyable, healthy, safe, and trouble-free Internet experience and that starts with each marketer choosing against sending unsolicited email marketing.
Clarification: There are different kinds of spam out there.
1. There are the ubiquitous "Nigerian scams" that fill our inboxes with all-caps messages from some low-level banker or public servant.
2. There are less-than-family-friendly messages about anatomy enlargement or some other sensitive topic that you don't want your young children reading. These often have subject lines designed to get past your spam filters that read "v1agra" or "enlargem3nt."
3. There are legitimate businesses that try to sell legitimate products or services but send messages
The first type of emails is illegal and part of something called a "419 scam." Don't send them. Don't answer them. Just delete them or report them to the authorities.
The second type of emails is debatable. Their methods of trying to counteract your spam filter and their subject matter make their legitimacy debatable. (Which is why we separated them out from the third type of emails). Moreover, they are often inappropriate for a family inbox.
The third type of emails is the "least worst" of the batch. However, if you are an email marketer, you will still want to avoid sending unsolicited email.
How do people get your email to send these? Often, your email may appear in a list if, for example, you signed up for something on the Internet. To counter this, more and more companies are posting privacy statements promising to NOT sell your email address to anyone. However, just because that posting exists, doesn't mean that you should feel completely free to give your email address out... recently, one company was fined for posting that privacy statement then turning around and selling a list of emails three times over! Of course, not everyone who asks for your email address is bad; we're just mentioning this to you for two reasons:
1. First, so you will be cautious and judicious in where you leave your email.
2. Second, so you will know what other consumers are thinking about before they leave their email with you: you'd better do a good job of appearing legitimate!
Other ways that people get your email address is by using computer programs that scour the Internet for email addresses. That's why many people now post their email addresses like this:
myname(at)mydomain(dot)com rather than myname@mydomain.com.
Another way people can get your email address is by those increasingly annoying forwards that seem to circle the globe three or four times. Perhaps you've received one from a friend or family member. The subject line usually looks like this:
Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd: You HAVE to see this!
It's usually a humorous or heart-warming message promising luck or good fortune to someone who passes it on. When you open it up there are usually huge lists of email addresses in there of people in the past who have received it and sent it to someone else. This is a veritable goldmine of email addresses to scammers looking to send unsolicited sales messages to people.
That's unsolicited email marketing. Not recommended. For the purposes of this book, please realize that the type of Internet marketing we are referring to is the second kind... permission-based marketing.
Permission marketing
Permission marketing is very simple and straightforward: rather than merely blasting your sales message to whatever email address you have, you gather email addresses and send your message to those people.
To collect those email addresses, the most common (and legitimate) things to do are...
Invite visitors to leave their email address at your site.
Ask people for the email address during the sale.
The first kind of invitation is very common and you've probably seen many websites that do this: they have a line where you can "sign up now for a free newsletter" and a place to input their email address along with a button to submit. That is permission-based marketing because the act of them putting their email address into the line gives you permission to contact them.
Asking visitors for their email address during the sale serves a very similar purpose. As people transact with you, they may be quite willing to leave their email address with you for future updates. It's another way of asking for permission.
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Summary
Many businesses and non-profits use email marketing to advertise their business. Ethical, legitimate companies use permission-based email marketing to get the job done effectively. Now that you know some of the details about permission-based marketing, let's look at how you can use it effectively to build your business!
