The Pros & Cons of Email Marketing

Why Use Email Marketing?

This style of marketing is clearly very effective, as it is growing in popularity every year. There are a number of reasons for this.

The Internet is widespread and commonly used – One of the biggest reasons to try this type of direct marketing is that so many people, from a diverse cross section of society, use the Internet regularly. Indeed, a large number of people who use the 'Net, do so virtually every day. This means that a carefully researched and implemented email marketing campaign should reach its target audience extremely quickly, as long as they are within the Internet using demographic.

Easy to measure success rate – It is possible to keep quite detailed stats on the effectiveness of different email marketing campaigns and this is popular with companies who, understandably, prefer to know exactly where their money is going. This measurability of return on investment, is apparently almost as good as that offered by search marketing.

Access to a motivated and engaged customer base – If the advertisers choose to use opt-in email marketing (where the customer has agreed to receive emails from that advertiser), they can be confident of reaching a highly targeted and, in theory, interested number of customers with comparative ease. This style of direct marketing connects an informed and receptive audience with an appropriate business, all at the touch of a button. Once the client database has been built up, the advertiser can send out regular emails, newsletters and promotions through an automated process (known as Drip Marketing) and so save both time and money.

Comparatively cheap – Although the initial setting up of a customer database can be both time consuming and costly, once it is done, future marketing material can be delivered quickly and efficiently, literally with the click of a mouse. This is especially so when the advertiser uses opt-in email marketing coupled with drip marketing. Just think how affordable and fast this is compared to a more traditional marketing technique like telemarketing (telesales).

Problems With Email Marketing

Without doubt, the biggest drawback with this kind of direct marketing is the number of emails that are never delivered to the targeted recipient. There are 2 main reasons for this:

Email filtering – There are dozens of Internet filters out there and many operate as spam filters. Whilst some spam filters are designed to protect against computer viruses and other forms of malware, others may automatically block any emails from addresses that they don't recognize or suspect could be of danger to the computer on which they are installed.

This is a particular problem for email marketing companies when the potential recipient of their emails only has access to a work computer, as many companies have tight email filters installed on their staffs' computers to prevent, what they consider, to be work time wasting emails such as these.

Email rejection – This can happen simply because the email address that the promotional email is being sent to is incorrect; perhaps the potential customer entered their details incorrectly when agreeing to opt-in email marketing or maybe they have changed their address and failed to notify the marketing company.

Not suitable for all demographics – whilst using the Internet as a marketing tool can be highly effective for some demographics, such as those in the computer literate digital generation, if you are looking to contact mainly pensioners and retirees, this might not be the best direct marketing strategy.