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Email Marketing column on
the Microsoft web site:
Definition of Email Marketing
Email Marketing means developing
marketing strategies that use electronic mail to communicate with current customers and
prospects.
It is important to emphasize that
email marketing is not spamming, that is, indiscriminately transmitting a great number of emails and/or newsletters without the consent of the recipients. On the contrary, email marketing actions are based on the
express willingness of the recipient to receive advertising information. Furthermore, spamming is contrary to
Internet etiquette (Netiquette), the collection of rules of good behavior that users have developed and adopted spontaneously over the years.
The latest research shows that email marketing is destined to develop rapidly. Indeed, email:
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90% of internet users
use email, and 74% of them consider it vital.
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It is easy to use.
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It is fast. A study in 1997 by Inverse Network Technology (INT) found that 91% of email messages arrive at destination within 5 minutes, 5% within 30 minutes, 1% within 60 minutes and 3% within 12 hours. This speed makes it possible to obtain results within a few hours of sending the message.
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It has a very favorable
cost-benefit ratio.
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It is reliable. The INT study showed that in 95% of the cases user access to the email service of the Internet Service Provider was successful on the first try for both sending and receiving.
The principal purposes of email marketing are:
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To acquire new customers.
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To build customer loyalty.
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To reinforce the company brands.
To maximize the efficiency
of your email marketing, it is important to synchronize it with an update of your web site. This way your e-mail messages can include
links to the related pages of the company web site.
This operation presents two advantages:
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You can check
the results of your marketing campaign in real time, verifying how many and which people clicked on the various links.
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You can pack more into the
message. Recipients are more likely to read a shorter message.
The ratio of the number of people who click on the links in a message to the number of people who receive the message is called
Click Through (CT). Research conducted by Jupiter found that
currently, the average Click Through from a
well-conducted email marketing campaign varies between 5% and 15%. This data is extremely positive, especially when compared to direct mail campaigns using the postal
service, where a return of
2% is considered satisfactory.
Authors:
Adriana Galgano and Eugenio La Mesa (blog)
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