Bennett Financial Services

E-mail marketing uses electronic mail over the internet as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to business clientele or new prospects.  The purpose is to enhance both business and customer loyalty.

There are several advantages to using e-mail marketing including the ability to distribute information to a wide range of recipients at a relatively low cost.  Secondly, the effectiveness of the campaign can be easily tracked and documented.  One can track users via auto-responders, web bugs, bounce messages, unsubscribe requests, read receipts, and click-throughs, etc. These mechanisms can be used to measure e-mail open rates, positive or negative responses, and to correlate sales with marketing.  Thirdly, the delivery time is very short and delivery to the recipient’s internet server is assured.  Tracking and response metrics enables tuning and optimization of the E-mail marketing channel by a process of testing different variants and calculation of statistically significant results. The challenge is to get the recipient to open the email.

Business can reach large numbers of e-mail subscribers who have consented to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.  Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger other messages to be delivered automatically, or other events, such as updating the profile of the recipient to indicate a specific interest category.

It is estimated that well over half of those using the internet check their e-mail or send an e-mail each day, thus one can see why e-mail is popular with digital marketers.  As an added bonus, e-mail marketing is paper-free.  As a result of the above features, business can generate repeat business affordably and automatically.

There are, however, some disadvantages.  Many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate send unsolicited bulk e-mail, also known as spam.  Libel and trademark infringement is common.

It is often difficult to distinguish between legitimate and spam e-mail marketing. Spammers frequently represent themselves as legitimate operators.  Some lobby groups representing marketing associations want to legalize activities that some would consider to be spamming.  Moreover, the sheer volume of spam has led some users to mistake legitimate commercial e-mail for spam.  This can arise when a user receives e-mail from a mailing list to which they subscribe.  Confusion can arise when both legitimate and spam messages have a similar appearance.   

Because the amount of spam being sent is so great, most people use spam filters.  The problem here is that many legitimate email messages are filtered out.

Companies considering the use of an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws.  Companies can be blacklisted if internet e-mail administrators determine that the company is sending spam.

To offset the above disadvantages of e-mail marketing, some companies are using what is termed ‘Opt-in e-mail’.  Essentially, the targeted recipient of the email advertising consents to receive it.  This involves a technology of protocols to establish this consent.  One example might be sending newsletters to established clients.  When the data base is set up, subsequent newsletters can be sent out automatically.  A derivation of this is the technique of requiring a potential recipient to manually confirm their request for information by clicking a special link which includes a unique identification code to confirm that the owner of the recipient email address has indeed requested the information.

There are some legal statutes and regulations primarily designed to deal with privacy issues.  Some jurisdictions require an opt-in regime, where unsolicited emails may be sent only with prior agreement of the recipient.  Software has been developed to help compliance. To help comply with these regulations of commercial e-mail, some businesses require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.

In conclusion, e-mail marketing can be very effective if done properly.