Email Marketing for Beginners

After doing so much research I concluded that most of the businesses thinking about promoting their products and services through email marketing are not searching for "how to create an effective email campaign?" but rather they are goggling about the most basic and standard question, "What the hell is this Email Marketing". According to the numbers of a keyword research analysis, at least 675,000 people monthly demand answers to this very question.

So that's why after so much reading and research this is my first effort in response to those hundreds of thousands of people searching answer of this question into search engines every month. So now I will define what this marketing channel is, how it can be beneficial for business and how it works exactly.

It is a form of 'Direct Marketing' which uses email as a channel of communication. We all know about direct marketing, it describes all marketing form goes straight to the end-user. Companies use it as an outreach method to generate exposure for their product or services, drive traffic to their website, and to build and retain a loyal customer base. Does the term customer loyalty remind o you of something? Yes the CRM cycle, so it use the same path as CRM cycle to build the customer cycle.

So, before getting towards the technical components of how it works, it is important to understand its classification.

1. Newsletter Email Marketing: It's primary goal is to keep in touch with the opt-in email database of existing customers on a frequent basis. This is an attempt to maintain the relationship with existing customers and updating them about the new press release, new developments or upcoming events etc.

2. Promotional Email Marketing: It is very much similar to the previous one, just not used on a regular basis like weekly or monthly. It is used to inform the customers about promotional activities which can be either about new product or services launches or coupons, sales, or special promotions.

3. Acquisition Email Marketing: This type of marketing is centered towards acquisition of new customers. It involves sending emails with the intention of driving traffic towards your website, and encouraging new customers to sign up for something, juice up the sales or merely gaining exposure of your company's brand name, product, or service offerings.

Some people see this type of email marketing as spam because it involves mass mailing to those who are not customers yet. But if you want to attract new customers, this type of emailing is important and you have to find an ESP who can provide you an opt-in email database to which you can send your emails directly without spamming. Or you can build your own opt-in list through various ways like participating in promotional online activities, through your blog, at point of sale, hold a contest, offer free information etc. Well that is a different topic and I will talk about that later. There is also another way, you can purchase email list from link broker but I personally don't recommend that.

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