Email marketing is a form of direct marketing. Utilizing electronic mail means that a direct line of communication is in place between your business and your target audience. Technically every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing, but this term does get more specific. Email marketing is sending emails with the purpose of maintaining a relationship between a business and its potential or current consumers. Enhancing this relationship encourages customer loyalty and increases the chances of repeat business. Email marketing can also be used to solicit new customers or to convince current customers to purchase a product.

While email marketing is a good form of communication, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages to this platform.

Advantages:

• Companies using email marketing can track their progress. If there is more traffic to their website or their store since the email was sent, then marketing was a success.
• Along with tracking progress, analytics are available to see how many people opened your message, how many clicked on a link and who responded. This allows you to know what parts of your campaign are working and what parts aren’t.
• Advertisers can reach large numbers of people who have subscribed to receive emails. Emails can be targeted specifically to the ideal customer. Those people are interested in what your business has to offer and voluntarily signed up to receive more information.
• Over half of all internet users check or send emails daily. Some people will check it multiple times a day. So, if they are the type to open every email, they will see your message.
• Email marketing allows marketers to communicate with consumers in a personalized way. There is a lot of dedication made to the creative elements and messaging elements in order to make each campaign successful. They are also highly customizable, which means everything from the actual message of your email to the design, layout, color and images can be customized.
• Transactional emails are included in email marketing. This give an automatic response for important customer events like purchases.
• Email Marketing is cheap! Sometimes it’s even free. Companies like MailChimp offer inexpensive ways to email market to large groups of people. Compared to other types of advertising, email marketing is one of the least expensive ways to relay your message!

Disadvantages:

• The rejection or spam rate of emails by the consumers’ email program will negatively affect the delivery rate of emails. This, unfortunately, if not something that can be controlled and can even affect how the customer receives non-business emails.
  • While almost all reputable email service providers try to make sure your emails are not blocked by ISP’s, they can’t control whether your message lands in spam or in the inbox.
• Consumers have the option to unsubscribe to your emails at any time. If they don’t like what you are sending, they will break contact with you. When enough people unsubscribe, it can impact your business in a big way.
• If several customers report your emails as spam, the provider can report you and your company to the web host. If the host things you may be spamming people, it could shut down your website. Sending too many emails can give customers a negative view of your company, which is the opposite of what was intended.
• Email marketing requires constant engagement to keep your customers interested. Someone may sign up as part of a promotion, but not actually want to be subscribed. Providing emails could give the customer a discount for a product, so they sign up, but not actually want to be emailed. A user could also unintentionally sign up, like if subscribing was the only way to allow them access to a web site. No matter why or how they signed up, keeping them engaged and subscribed takes a lot of work.
• Customization is a great thing, but it also takes a lot of effort. Customers will not gravitate to something that is not eye catching. Time needs to be devoted to providing interesting content around what you are trying to convey.

Email marketing is a great tool, but it can be difficult to get right. At New York Marketing, we try our best to relay your message in effective, attractive emails to your consumers. We will work with you to personalize your marketing strategy that will accurately fit you and your company’s needs. Contact us and find out more about how we can help you!