Internet is the fastest growing marketing medium today, simply because most
of your prospects spend more time online than reading a newspaper/magazine,
watching TV or other media. It makes infinite more sense to invest in online
marketing today as its cheap and hits your prospects directly.
If targeted correctly and message crafted aptly, e-marketing can help you
deliver the right content to the right prospect at the right time in the
selling cycle and continuously achieve high response rates from quality
prospects. Perhaps, that would explain why Microsoft sends out over 20 million
email marketing pieces every month.
If you are still unsure, then here are the top 10 reasons, why you should
invest in email marketing right away.
1. Global reach: No matter where you are or whom you need to reach, targeted
emails pave the way. Borders are no obstacles in email marketing.
2. Lower cost: Costs incurred in designing, executing, testing, sending and
receiving an email is up to 78% less for a run of 5000 over paper-based direct
mail version. When you add e-mail to your marketing mix, you spend less time,
money and resources than with traditional marketing vehicles like direct
mail or print advertising.
3. Interactive: You can innovatively initiate campaigns using graphics, videos,
music, quiz, game or whatever that will be of interest to your prospect,
to grab his attention and interest immediately.
4. Highly personalized: Email enables you to personalize and greet every
person you target. This helps in creating a special bond with the prospects.
5. Round the clock marketing: With an email the audience can understand your
offering even when you are out of office.
6. Measurable results: Special tools are available that accurately measure
click-through rate, conversion rate, how a person one arrived at your website,
and more, to enable you to assess the success of different email campaigns.
7. Targeted marketing: Since prepackaged and custom-built lists are available,
you could reach only those who might require your services, solutions or
products without bothering those who do not. You can select each one of your
targets based on geography, age, income, spends, and many other parameters.
8. Opt-in or unsubscribe options: Emails contain opt-in and opt-out options
which help you to shortlist your prospects and reach only the ones genuinely
interested in your offerings.
9. Faster response: Time to receive responses through e-mail is one to three
days, where you will get maximum responses on day one itself, while a direct
mail campaign would take minimum 7 to 12 days to generate any responses.
Further, responding to a direct mail is more cumbersome, while a person can
respond to an email immediately.
10. Simplest: Executing an email campaign is simple and you can do it sitting
at home without any extensive resources.
Online marketing is a high response and opportunistic medium for communicating
with customers, and if executed right, has the power to bring huge benefits
to your business. Go ahead, initiate an extremely targeted e-marketing and
see your profits grow. Many of your competitors are doing it already!
If you would like to know more about email marketing or if you are looking
for service providers in this domain, contact me at anujaa@stratmail.com
. I can give you a list and comparison of some good companies providing
affordable online marketing solutions.
Anuja is the marketing and content manager in a global marketing firm.