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Over the past 200 years or so, the principles of modern advertising haven't changed much. If a business wants an audience to purchase certain goods or services, it needs to make a persuasive argument and put it in front of people. If you flip through magazines and newspapers at your local newsstand, although styles and interests may have changed, the basic technique businesses use to communicate with consumers is still the same. Exactly how businesses get their message out, on the other hand, has changed dramatically and continues to change. The ubiquity of television in our homes, for instance, made it possible for advertisers to market their products to a huge audience during commercial breaks, whether they liked it or not. Telephones eventually gave way to telemarketing, much to the chagrin of families in the middle of dinner. When you open up your mailbox hoping to find letters and postcards, you instead see a handful of flyers for local restaurants and retail stores that offer coupons and inform you of upcoming sales.
After a quick glance, most people probably end up throwing these ads in the trash. Not only do businesses spend a lot of money for nothing, but lots of paper gets wasted in the process. The Internet has introduced a new twist on direct mail and given businesses another chance to reach people, a technique known as e-mail marketing. It's a cheap, fast way to reach a large base of customers, and unlike direct mail, it's easy to track the effectiveness of an e-mail marketing campaign electronically. On top of that, it can help save a ton of a paper, since the U.S. Sounds great, right? Is e-mail marketing the perfect, inexpensive way to target customers, or does it have any disadvantages? What about spam? To learn about how companies get the word out on their products with e-mail marketing, read the next page. Although it's essentially any e-mail a company sends out to people, there are a few approaches to it.
When customers sign up for a member card, for instance, a company typically asks them to write down their e-mail address on the application form. The company records all of these addresses, and when a big sale or a special in-store reading by a best-selling author approaches, e-mails are sent to the members. These e-mails might include special coupons or list the newest available products -- whatever's included, the point is to get as many people into the stores as possible and continue using their services. How is a newsletter different from a one-time promotional e-mail? One example we can look at is that of an independent record store. Because of online music stores like iTunes and the ease and simplicity of MP3s, many record stores selling CDs or vinyl are struggling to make ends meet. Some are trying new tactics to keep customers interested, and convincing loyal customers to sign up for periodic e-newsletters can inform people about new releases, special store-only digital downloads, in-store performances and big sales.
So how do companies send out their e-mails, and how do they know whether the e-mails they're sending out are making a difference? To learn about e-mail marketing software and services, read the next page. A business will usually use e-mail marketing lists, collections of identities and e-mail addresses that act as sales leads. There are also specific e-mail marketing services -- some companies exist simply to find customers willing to receive promotional material and organize their information into those lists, and businesses will pay them for this service. People's names, addresses or additional information can't just be cherry-picked from any location. On top of the fact that e-mail marketing saves money and resources spent on paper and the use of the post office system, there are several reasons companies use it as a major source of advertising. E-mail marketing lets a company send a message directly to customers -- instead of waiting and hoping someone will stumble across a Web site, sending out e-mails puts the information right up front and can lead to direct sales if there's a link to an online store.
Once a business sends an e-mail, special e-mail marketing software programs can record important statistics. An open rate, for example, measures how many people successfully received and clicked open a specific promotional e-mail instead of deleting it. A click-through rate, on the other hand, gives the percentage of people who actually clicked on links offered in the e-mail and used a particular Web site or opened a specific coupon. While e-mail marketing has many advantages for companies trying to reach a broad audience, there are some downfalls. One of the biggest issues that determines whether an e-mail marketing campaign is successful or not is the concept of permission -- and there's even a law that sets guidelines for companies. To learn about when an e-mail crosses that gray line and becomes spam, read the next page. After writing a quick, flashy paragraph about the drink and typing out a vague subject line, you search the Web for as many e-mail addresses as you can find -- the more people who receive your message, the more potential you have at making more money.
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