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Email done right is a powerful tool that produces real value for both the sender and the recipient. To be professional, it’s important that businesses communicate with professionally written and designed email. Here’s why:
- COST EFFECTIVE: While there are extra costs involved in graphic email marketing, such as design and production, your production and delivery costs are significantly cheaper than that of direct mail. For the same amount, you can send out a hundred emails for every letter while still promoting your branded image.
- RELATIONSHIP BUILDING: Email is the least intrusive method for connecting and reconnecting with your customers--enabling the recipient to respond at their leisure and with the least effort. A well thought out and designed email plan can create and strengthen customer loyalty and recognition.
- ACTIVE EFFORT: With email your effort to reach a customer is active and timely, and doesn’t rely on the customer to always contact your business.
- QUICK: Once you’re set up with a well thought out and designed email program, you can easily launch a major marketing initiative to all your customers in hours instead of days or weeks. No other direct marketing source may be implemented in such a time frame or with such frequency.
- USES HYPERLINKS: With just a click of the mouse, a customer can go from reading your marketing message to purchasing at your online checkout. This speedy one-step process is where marketing reaches its penultimate advantage.
- DETAILED FEEDBACK: Email marketing allows for comprehensive feedback. You can measure how many of your emails were successfully delivered and opened, how many times your links were clicked on, and, most important, how many sales you made. You can have a more thorough campaign analysis.
- AFFORDABLE SEGMENTATION & TARGETING: Email marketing is agile, allowing you to vary the content sent to customers on your distribution list at minimal cost. You can segment (split) your lists based on market segments such as geographic location, purchase history, gender, and/or age to send tailored messages, thus improving your conversion to sales rate.
- ENHANCES OTHER MEDIA: Email works well when part of an integrated direct marketing campaign. While other methods can come across as disruptive or pushy, email is able to remind or prepare your customers for a sales call--or be a sales follow-up--without making your customer uncomfortable.
*Source: The Email Marketing Kit, SitePoint, 2007
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