Introduction to Permission-Based Email Marketing

Posted on September 29, 2006 by Eric Hebert
Filed Under General, Permission-Based Email Marketing, Internet Marketing 101 |

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 Perhaps one of the most widely used forms of online marketing, the email changed the way direct marketers did business after it was introduced in the mid 1990’s. Before the advent of email, direct marketers had to purchase lists of names and addresses, then pay a good amount of money to ship postcards or envelops to addresses. With email, postage is no longer required (although some major email providers are thinking about introducing certified email programs that charge small amounts for each email sent.)

Because of the low cost of sending mass emails out to millions of potential customers, people decided to take advantage of it, sending more mail than anybody wanted about products nobody cared about. The term spam was coined and today, after much legislation, is an illegal activity that, believe it or not, has not been enforced enough. However, when it comes to your own email marketing campaigns, the Can-Spam act should be enforced, not necessarily because you’ll be engaging in any illegal activities, but for the sake of not insulting your customers or tarnishing your brand name.

The marketing potential of a permission based email campaign is a little different than other forms of internet marketing. First, many email addresses are usually collected in one of two ways: the first is usually collected from a “Join our Email List” form on your website. This is a way for your customer to say, “I’m not interested in purchasing your product at this time, but I am interested in it enough that maybe I’ll purchase it down the road.” Email marketing gives you a second chance to get the message out to potential customers that didn’t buy the first time. When done correctly, you email campaign let’s you build a trusting relationship with not only these potential customers, but your current customers as well. After a customer purchases a product or service from you, it’s usually standard operating procedure to gather information including name, address, phone, and EMAIL! This gives you the perfect opportunity to follow up about the product or service they purchased, send a survey to fill out, or more importantly offer any back-end products or services. With a carefully planned email campaign you have the chance to keep these customers coming back for more.

Now a big mistake most make with an email campaign is that the content is always the same: buy this or buy that. This is the wrong way to go about running your email campaign. Imagine yourself getting your mail today. Which mail will you read and which mail will you throw out? I can bet that any supermarket circulars, auto loan vouchers, and pre-approved credit card offers will go straight into the trash. Why? Because you’ve read them before and you already know what you’re getting. The same applies in email marketing. If you just send out the same boring old “buy me” email, then nobody will ever read them; they’ll just delete your emails along with all the other annoying junk email that they get. You don’t want to be associated with junk mail, do you?

Careful timing and content planning is a must when setting up an email campaign. Treat your email campaign as a company newsletter or magazine. Send articles (which are discussed in detail here), company news, industry news, and customer testimonials alongside your special offers to keep your recipients interested in your company. And while reputation is crucial in marketing and building your brand, too much repetition in email will cause disinterest. Keep your email schedule to just a few times a month at first, and you can gradually increase it over time as you build a rapport with your audience.

Email marketing is a really fantastic way to help build your brand with your existing customers as well as earn the trust of others. You will find that, when combined with blogs and RSS feeds, your business has the ability to reach out to your customers and target market and communicate with them better than ever before.

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