Online advertising covers a variety of methods of marketing communication, and an early technology still in use is Email Marketing. Marketing through email has a long and interesting history. It’s easy to do, costs very little, and produces traceable results. I could start one this afternoon.
But,
Before this job, I worked for an internet service provider in their tech support department. It was a fun job at times, because I like solving interesting problems. It was an awful job at times, because people were very angry about those problems. A lot of those problems came from spam. Email is one of the giant arteries of the internet from which everyone is blasted a barrage of messages. A large amount of these messages are things you want, things you don’t care about, tracking tools, and to a small degree malicious code.
I would certainly want to be one of the messages you want, but so does every other message in your inbox, and you only have so much time to scroll past.
So how do I become the message that sparks your interest?
Marketing companies have been trying to answer this question for many years, and they have come up with a few answers.
One idea is to offer opt-in advertising, by providing the customer a way of signing up for the email campaign. This is usually done with a special offers or newsletter sign up box.
Some companies use transaction emails to up sell the customer on additional products and services. Transaction emails are messages triggered in response to a customer action such as a confirmation email for a purchase. Along with the appropriate sales information, one can include information about upcoming sales and promotions.
So what do you think of email marketing? Is it something you feel is effective? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.