Sunday, December 14, 2008

Why Email Marketing Should be Part of Your Next Campaign


Although many may shy from email marketing because of the fear that SPAM might ruin the company’s credibility, the fact is that email marketing is a powerful tool when used correctly and appropriately.

Email marketing can deliver sales and revenue and has the unique ability to create and form lasting relationships. According to Jenkins email marketing is an “incredibly underrated tool for building, continuing and extending a relationship with a prospect” (2008). Email marketing can be efficiently utilized in branding, communication efforts and loyalty. Email marketing can facilitate loyalty by offering enticing incentives though email and by developing that long lasting relationship with subscribers that brand managers live for.

If the aforementioned values aren’t good enough how do you feel about utilizing email to reduce cost? With the word recession on everybody’s lips, this is a sure sell especially when email marketing has the ability to be a great bargain.

Email marketing can also be very effectively used to create a viral marketing campaign. Samsung, for example used email in conjunction with podcasts and social networks to create a viral campaign that generated a 71.4% spike in applicants and 1.5 million votes were cast as a result of the campaign. How did they do it?

Samsung hosts a fresh film competition to find the next big film maker. 10 film crews are assembled and they have “one week to cast, shoot and edit a 10 minute film” (Miller, 2007). When faced with the challenge of promoting the event and spreading the word, Samsung fired up the viral campaign that delivered the results as described above. Part of the campaign involved sending 2 million emails to the target audience, and amazing results were delivered because this critical element was integrated into the campaign.

In closing, I hope I have convinced you to give email marketing another look and I encourage you to check back for my list of things to do in 2009. I guarantee email marketing will be close to the top on my list!
References

Jenkins, S. (2008, December 15). The truth (and lies) about email marketing. iMediaConnection. Retrieved December 15, 2008 from http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/21413.asp
Miller, S. (2007, July 23). Tool: viral marketing. Brandweek. 48, 28.

1 comment:

Robinsen Clerk said...

It can be used thoughtfully to build loyalty and trust in the brand. Email marketing is important for building prospects, leads, and relationships with past customers.