ARTICLES FOR WEBMASTERS 
 The Pros and Cons of Email Marketing (opinion 1)
By Brian Willett
Each and every day, the trend becomes more and more
evident - the world is moving online, and any business that doesn't
lead the charge is going to be left behind. Recent Nielsen
reports have shown a significant increase in the amount of time
Americans are spending online, meaning that traditional forms of
marketing may be going largely unnoticed. And it's not just at
home that your potential customers are accessing the internet - the
popularity of web browsing on mobile phones is exploding, thanks to a
rapidly expanding market of smart phones and PDAs.
Knowing where your customers are is just half the
battle, however. The internet is a limitless expanse, and trying
to pinpoint precise areas of interest and commonly accessed websites
across your entire customer base would be a nightmare. Luckily,
there is one place you know every single one of your users will end up
at least once, but usually many, times each day. That destination
is their email inbox.
Adopting an email marketing campaign is easier said
than done though, and there are many concerns that need to be
addressed. Here are a few positives and negatives of email
marketing campaigns any potential marketer should be aware of.
PROS
Cost - The internet is rewriting a lot of traditional business rules,
and cost structure is near the top of the list. Email marketing
is tremendously less expensive than any other type of campaign.
With email marketing, there are no printing costs, no web-hosting
costs, no payments for advertisement placing and no paying for
airtime. Instead of printing thousands of coupons or a multi-page
newsletter, copies can be sent to subscribers free of charge. In
addition, there are no delivery charges or postage to be paid - the
price of email marketing can't be beat. The only real cost
involved here is the price of copywriters, but that's an unavoidable
cost in any medium.
Reach - If there's one thing that every marketer wants more of, it's
potential customers. And while traditionally businesses have
focused on local markets, gradually expanding their efforts as their
circles of influence increased, this is no longer the case. Email
marketing allows you to transcend vast distances because you don't have
to physically be where your customers are, you simply have to deliver a
message. An email newsletter can reach across the world,
guaranteeing more impressions than even a billboard looking over Times
Square. Essentially, the internet brings all of your potential
customers to you, so you don't need to worry about going out to find
them; email marketing allows a local business to become a global one in
the blink of an eye.
Speed - Time is money, and the more you save, the better it is for the
bottom line. Even the simplest of ad campaigns in traditional
media operates over a long timespan - television or radio airtime must
be secured, messages must be recorded, posters need to be printed up,
newsletters need to be delivered. With email marketing, all that
needs to be done is design and editing, because delivery is
instantaneous. Sales can begin and end on the minute if you
desire, because messages arrive mere moments after they are sent.
And if any errors are discovered after emails are sent, they can be
corrected just as quickly; no need to call off the presses or spend
more time and money printing up corrections or retractions.
CONS
Impersonality - Though traditional marketing may seem outdated, there
is one advantage it does have - intimacy. Even if a television
pitchman is speaking to an audience of thousands, the sight of a human
face and the sound of a soothing voice can make a message seem
incredibly personal. With an email, however, it's not quite the
same. Reading a message isn't the same as being spoken to, and
consumers are aware that promotional emails are sent to massive lists
of subscribers. Using individual customer information to provide
a personalized greeting is an option, but sometimes that can feel
forced to readers.
Cutting Through the Clutter - Due to the large number of advantages
associated with email marketing, campaigns are run by countless
companies. This means that the typical consumer's inbox is filled
with messages each day, which can be quite overwhelming. If a
consumer has a number of messages and is in a hurry, he may simply
delete all of them instead of trying to pick out the good and the
bad. Worse, your campaign emails might be mistaken for spam or
malicious emails, meaning that they will be deleted before your
customers even see them. And once many email clients identify one
of your messages as spam, the rest are automatically classified as the
same and eliminated upon receipt.
Populating Your List - All of the advantages and assertions of
effectiveness in email marketing campaigns hinge on one very large
assumption - that you'll have a customer base to contact.
However, this doesn't just happen overnight. Collecting email
addresses from consumers can be a difficult, time consuming task; doing
so without appearing intrusive is harder still. There are also
consumers who either don't use email very much or prefer not to give
out their addresses, which means an email campaign wouldn't be able to
reach them. And identifying potential consumers that have never
visited your physical location can be next to impossible, unless you
have a well-publicized and easy to use website featuring an option to
sign up for company emails. Because of these difficulties, merely
populating a list for your campaign may cost more than a traditional
campaign would have.
Recent articles:
|