Advertising Email Marketing
Advertising email marketing is one of the least expensive ways a small business can reach a sizable number of customers. For many business owners, being a TV star through local television commercials is a dream, but too expensive to come true. Radio ads are much less expensive but not at all effective if one is doing business to business marketing and telemarketing might work if you want ten thousand people angry with you because your campaign called them at dinner time. Direct mailing, sometimes costing up to fifty cents per mailbox delivery has an effectiveness rating of about .05%, leaving advertising email marketing as one of the most cost effective for the amount of money spent on the campaign. But there are a number of things to consider as one gets ready to do such an effort.
The first thing that is important in doing advertising email marketing is decide whether or not it will be done in house or conducted by a marketing company. If a company has a well developed mailing list that has been constructed over a period of time comprised of walk-ins, window shoppers, customers and referrals, and then a company might consider doing the campaign in house. The strength of any direct marketing campaign, be it telemarketing, postal mail or email is the recipient list. The response numbers with an email effort that uses a bulk email list that is targeted can be frighteningly low and actual sales numbers from those responses will be even lower. For example, suppose a company uses a marketing firm to send out fifty million emails for $4000.00. It is likely that only .075% of those recipients will ever open the message meaning three thousand seven hundred and fifty persons. Of that amount of opened emails, only .02%, or 75 will typically result in any kind of response which will include window shopping, information seeking or a sale.
If 10% of those seventy five opened emails result in a sale, then the cost of advertising for each sale is about five hundred and six dollars. To be honest, if the marketer is selling round the world cruises at forty thousand a pop, this might be a real good deal, but if an ecommerce retailer is selling women's designer handbags for five hundred dollars, it's not a good deal any way it is sliced. No matter what is being sold, the numbers don't change much when it comes to a bulk email list used in advertising email marketing. The messages get caught in network spam traps or are just deleted when the recipient doesn't know the sender. "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Psalm 90:1-2)
But there is an alternative to bulk email lists and that is the targeted opt-in list that most sophisticated marketers use solely in their advertising and marketing efforts. Advertising email marketing can raise those dismal percentages already discussed by a few percentage points and thus lower advertising costs per sale by using targeted and opt-in lists. With today's sophisticated marketing databases, there are a number of discriminatory factors that can be employed to increase effectiveness in reaching potential customers. Age, gender, occupation, income, place of residence, hobbies and sometimes education can all be used in developing a highly targeted email list. And to a lesser degree, when doing business to business emailing campaigns, other discriminatory factors can be factored in.
The opt-in part of the advertising email marketing effort is the single most important part of a successful campaign. Marketing firms that conduct successful and high return of investment campaigns for their customers use what are called opt-in mailing lists. These lists are the result of that firm having spent much effort cultivating relationships with Internet mail recipients to get to the point those recipients will accept emails from that firm on a regular basis. Often those relationships are based on contests, prizes and games that are used to keep the interest of the recipient going. Clients of these advertising email marketing firms pay for these discriminatory mailing lists where recipients have said yes (opted-in) to getting the firm's emails. These email lists can sometimes produce quite astounding response and subsequent sales numbers, but the services don't come cheaply.
One should keep in mind all of the efforts that go into making up such a strong mailing list. There is an ongoing analysis of the data that is received from other email campaigns that can be used to refine future campaign efforts. But also included in the cost of using an advertising email marketing firm are the hours put into the actual managing of the effort and putting together strong analytical data that the client can apply to other marketing efforts. And of course, there is the knowledge of the sophisticated art form that makes up a successful emailing effort because there are very strict rules in emailing that have been developed over almost twenty years of the medium's popularity. Just as an example, there is a very highly developed method of writing the message subject that is a key to getting that message opened up and read. And once that message is opened up, there had better be something pretty good offered inside to get that recipient to respond, such as an invitation to a blog, a subscription to an online newsletter or offers to get a whitepaper download.
The first thing that is important in doing advertising email marketing is decide whether or not it will be done in house or conducted by a marketing company. If a company has a well developed mailing list that has been constructed over a period of time comprised of walk-ins, window shoppers, customers and referrals, and then a company might consider doing the campaign in house. The strength of any direct marketing campaign, be it telemarketing, postal mail or email is the recipient list. The response numbers with an email effort that uses a bulk email list that is targeted can be frighteningly low and actual sales numbers from those responses will be even lower. For example, suppose a company uses a marketing firm to send out fifty million emails for $4000.00. It is likely that only .075% of those recipients will ever open the message meaning three thousand seven hundred and fifty persons. Of that amount of opened emails, only .02%, or 75 will typically result in any kind of response which will include window shopping, information seeking or a sale.
If 10% of those seventy five opened emails result in a sale, then the cost of advertising for each sale is about five hundred and six dollars. To be honest, if the marketer is selling round the world cruises at forty thousand a pop, this might be a real good deal, but if an ecommerce retailer is selling women's designer handbags for five hundred dollars, it's not a good deal any way it is sliced. No matter what is being sold, the numbers don't change much when it comes to a bulk email list used in advertising email marketing. The messages get caught in network spam traps or are just deleted when the recipient doesn't know the sender. "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Psalm 90:1-2)
But there is an alternative to bulk email lists and that is the targeted opt-in list that most sophisticated marketers use solely in their advertising and marketing efforts. Advertising email marketing can raise those dismal percentages already discussed by a few percentage points and thus lower advertising costs per sale by using targeted and opt-in lists. With today's sophisticated marketing databases, there are a number of discriminatory factors that can be employed to increase effectiveness in reaching potential customers. Age, gender, occupation, income, place of residence, hobbies and sometimes education can all be used in developing a highly targeted email list. And to a lesser degree, when doing business to business emailing campaigns, other discriminatory factors can be factored in.
The opt-in part of the advertising email marketing effort is the single most important part of a successful campaign. Marketing firms that conduct successful and high return of investment campaigns for their customers use what are called opt-in mailing lists. These lists are the result of that firm having spent much effort cultivating relationships with Internet mail recipients to get to the point those recipients will accept emails from that firm on a regular basis. Often those relationships are based on contests, prizes and games that are used to keep the interest of the recipient going. Clients of these advertising email marketing firms pay for these discriminatory mailing lists where recipients have said yes (opted-in) to getting the firm's emails. These email lists can sometimes produce quite astounding response and subsequent sales numbers, but the services don't come cheaply.
One should keep in mind all of the efforts that go into making up such a strong mailing list. There is an ongoing analysis of the data that is received from other email campaigns that can be used to refine future campaign efforts. But also included in the cost of using an advertising email marketing firm are the hours put into the actual managing of the effort and putting together strong analytical data that the client can apply to other marketing efforts. And of course, there is the knowledge of the sophisticated art form that makes up a successful emailing effort because there are very strict rules in emailing that have been developed over almost twenty years of the medium's popularity. Just as an example, there is a very highly developed method of writing the message subject that is a key to getting that message opened up and read. And once that message is opened up, there had better be something pretty good offered inside to get that recipient to respond, such as an invitation to a blog, a subscription to an online newsletter or offers to get a whitepaper download.
Advertising Email Marketing
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Reviewed by Anonymous
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12:14 PM
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