Author: Ben

Most companies now have email facilities to allow them to email customers or suppliers. Many companies also use email in their day to day work to communicate with other members of staff.

This may seem odd as they are often sat within eye sight of the person they are email, but there are many reasons why some employers prefer their staff to contact each other using emails.

Often emails are linked in to a internal calendar where you can email another member of staff about a meeting and it will automatically add it to their diary, this can be very useful in a busy office where people are in and out all of the time. Another good reason to use email is that there is effectively a paper trail of what has been asked or agreed between two of more people. This can come in handy if ever there is a discrepancy about what has been disgusted.

Mass emailing can work especially if you are using your own database to send to. If you opt to buy lists of email address from third parties you have to be aware that you may get the results that you had hoped for and can end up upsetting people by contacting them when they have not agreed for you to do so.

Although many companies that sell these lists stipulate that all the addresses are opted in, this is very often not the case. Also the data contacted in a mass email marketing list can often be out of date and not relevant to the business you are promoting.

You have to be careful how you send out these emails if you do decide to give it a try, as many server owners will not allow mass emailing as it not only uses up all their server bandwidth but can also cause the IP of the server to be blocked. If you are not sure on the limits of emails you can send through your server in any one time perior then check with your service provider.

Email marketing can be a very reliable form of marketing and can return you a lot of business if done correctly. But you do need to remember that you have to give your customers the option to opt out of future emails. This is a legal requirement and if not added to the bottom of email sent you can get in to serious trouble.

The best way to do this is to add a link to opt out, but then give the reader options of which email marketing messages they wish to stop receiving rather than removing them from all further communications. This way you may still be able to obtain their data for new product releases for example but they may not want to receive your weekly e-newsletter.

You may also ask the reader how often you can contact them if they stay opted in. Also remember to point out to customers that they will o longer receive special offers and voucher codes etc (if this is something that you offer) if they do opt out. Very often when people read this, they are less likely to opt out completely as none of us want to miss out on saving money if possible.

Email marketing is actually becoming quite popular especially amongst some of the big companies like Tesco’s and GAP. Many of these companies now offer incentives by signing up to receiving their emails like 20% off codes or free delivery. Many people do not mind receiving emails if they are offered something that may interest them.

When building up an email marketing list it is important that you gather some other information besides their email address. First and foremost is a name as if you can personalise an email, research shows that the open rate for the campaign is higher. You should also obtain information about their interests and what products or services they may want to know about if possible,. This will allow you to tailor the email you send to them to match their needs.

When sending out these types of emails, try and install some tracking software so you can see which elements of your email were most clicked on so you can work out what people are finding interesting about the marketing material you are sending them.