The Basics Of Opt-in Email Marketing

While search engine marketing (SEM) is the main arena for online marketing competition, email marketing remains an efficient and effective way to advertise. It involves direct sending of emails regarding products and promotions to both prospective and current buyers. In years 2009-2010, there was a 15% increase on the number of companies using direct email advertising.

Email Marketing vs. Email Spamming

Email marketing doesn't necessarily equate with spamming. There are laws in the United States which prohibit companies from forcibly sending emails to email address owners. In opt-in email marketing, the email recipient must first agree to receive newsletters and other online content from the advertisers.

The opt-in setup is beneficial to both the consumer and the business owner. The email owners feel that their privacy is not violated. In turn, the business owners do not waste time, bandwidth and money for updating unwilling customers.

Why Perform Opt-in Marketing?

In this setup , your marketing campaign has two main targets: people who have agreed to receive emails and existing customers. You may wonder, why not aggressively send emails to just everyone to increase the visibility of your products? Studies show that it costs more money and more emails to make buyers out of strangers to your products.

Statistics show that it will take 5-9 emails before making a complete stranger have a successful purchase. It should also be considered that there is a 50-50 chance between a customer reading the mail or immediately trashing it.

Hence, the most profitable scheme is to maintain contact to those with purchase histories. They are more familiar with your site and they already know that your mails are not spam. By continuously informing them about the latest products and promos, the chance for repeat-purchases significantly increase.

Doing it Right

If you want to engage in large scale opt-in email marketing, the best way to do it is to hire a marketing company. Look for a reputable service, as reviewed by other businessmen and tested by other companies. Of course, they must abide by the anti-spam laws. Their mailing list or collection of email addresses must only include people who consented to receive emails.

There are niches in the online market. Marketing companies will do the job of connecting you with the population that has demand for your products. They don't just send your ads to some random people who agreed to receive mails. Email advertising companies sort their mailing lists to connect you with those who need you.

You may also buy email marketing software. These are computer programs that will help you manage your mailing list and automate the mail-sending process. Software is especially helpful when you have thousands of recipients with different subscription preferences. For example, one customer wants to receive notifications weekly and another wants it monthly. You don't have to sort them manually because the software can do it for you.