Email marketing online is a form of marketing that uses electronic mail or email as a form of advertising and a way of communicating fundraising messages to a selected audience. This could translate into every email that is sent out to a potential or existing client or customer. However email marketing online does not work in this broad sense.Email marketing online refers to the emails sent out to existing clientele and customers to promote customer loyalty and repeated business with the company. The term also refers to the emails sent out to win over potential customers as well as to convince existing customers to purchase a particular product immediately. Advertisements that are sent as emails also fall under the category of email marketing online. It is important to note that emails in this case can be sent over the Intranet or Internet.
Most companies today prefer email marketing online to conventional, traditional advertising snail mail. This is so because email marketing online has many advantages. Some of these advantages include accurate tracking of return of investment, a substantial large number of clients or customers can be reached through this method, everybody checks their emails on a daily, regular basis nowadays and emails are popular with digital marketers as well. Also email marketing online is a cost effective method that has a proven successful track record. However, like all things, email marketing online has its disadvantages too. One of the disadvantages include that emails are usually filtered and are some are automatically forwarded to the spam folder and some are just rejected if the inbox is full. Another disadvantage of email marketing online is the issue of permission. You need to have the persons permission to be sending them commercial emails. If not the email ends up and spam and in some parts of the world this is a criminal offence and you can have your company website shut down and email accounts revoked.
There are three types of email marketing online. One is direct email. This involves an email sent with a promotional message to all email addresses in your data base. One can also rent out email databases of other companies. The second type is retention email. Retention emails are emails sent on a regular basis like newsletters. While such emails do contain promotional messages, they also provide information that adds value to the company thereby winning over long term customers. The third type of email marketing online involves advertising on other peoples emails. That is you put an advertisement in the email another company sends out to its subscribers. Some newsletters exist for the sole purpose of publishing other companies advertisements.
Email marketing online is a cheap and effective way of promoting products or services and gaining or maintaining existing or new clientele and customers, albeit if it is done right.