Sending emails to promote/market you business to existing customers is known as Email Marketing and is an inexpensive marketing method for small business owners
Many large companies like Amazon use promotional emails to market, and sell products.
However when was the last time your local restaurant or hairdresser .etc.. asked for an email address or sent you an email?
Why Use it?
Email Marketing has many benefits for small businesses they are:
- Cost- Much less expensive that printed media, PPC (Google Adwords)
- Can be automated .
- Can lead to direct sales
- Easy Tracked – No other form of promotion can be so easily tracked
- Can be used to open two way dialogue
- Instantaneous
- No geographic constraints/costs- i.e. It doesn’t matter if the recipient is in China or England or America.
- Can be used without a website
- Relatively easy to do
Email Marketing doesn’t involve huge set up costs, isn’t difficult, and doesn’t really need to be done by professional marketing people to be effective.
Example Emails
Here is a screenshot of a promotional email from Amazon:
No killer copy ! just a quick preview of the latest offers.
Here are three more examples two are from local businesses
The first is from a car sales business the subject line was
Green Light for Driverless cars in the UK
The second is from a local restaurant the subject line was
Christmas is just around the corner
The third is from an insurance business the subject line was
Upto 20% off travel insurance
All three companies got my email address because I purchased something from them, but I receive many emails from businesses that have obtained my email from a website form enquiry.
Getting Started- What Do You Need
Getting started is simple, with little setup costs, and can even be done using simple software that you use every day (e.g. your email client).
There are two main parts to the email marketing process:
Recommended Reading and Popular articles:
- Direct marketing guide from ico
- Direct marketing checklist from ico