E-mail Marketing Today -- Is it Profitable?

by Jayne Spencer, 2000

You bet it can be profitable and here's why:

A good bit of the spotlight today is on marketing with your own web page. Everyone wants to have one because they 're being told this is THE way to sell and advertise on line.

But wait! There is another alternative people are not looking at as much. The advertising value of selling by email! That's right! Most everyone has an email account but not everyone has a web page - at least not yet.

Email, as we know it today is accomplished by sending and receiving electronic messages by computer and modem.

At this writing, there are millions of people and businesses with email addresses that don't even have web sites.

What are some advantages of selling by email?

A big plus to using email in your business is speed. It would take days to reach your prospective customers by using snail mail. Email is almost instantaneous! You just can't beat performance like that. The snail mail way, your prospect might not even remember asking for your information by the time it has reached him and it just might get trashed unopened.

On the other hand, with the speed of return email, your customer doesn't have time to forget he or she asked for more info. A reply reaches them in a matter of seconds or minutes anywhere in the world if they have email access. Speedy replies to customers questions are always a plus for a good business.

Another plus for email delivery is, if your customer doesn't receive your email reply, you will receive notice in your email "in" box that the mail was not delivered. By knowing this, you can make different arrangements for contacting your customer. In other words, you know when mail is delivered. By snail mail, you might never know if your reply was delivered. It could have been trashed or lost before it reached its destination.

Many business people online today are using email for fast responses to customer's questions by using robot-like email known as autoresponders.  These are set up for many responses to potential customers depending on the information they request. This can all be done automatically and you never have to deal with the customer first hand. They can be delivered night or day, every hour of every day. What could be better than that? All done with email!

Another plus for using email to reach customers is the lack of having to spend hundreds of dollars in postage in making replies. When you average it out, there is really no comparison between the expense of sending email and the postage costs involved in mailing, not to speak of the trip to the local Post Office daily.

Don't forget that you can also send mass mailings to all your customers with just one typed letter done through email. All you have to do is make sure your customer's email address is posted to the BCC instead of the "TO" section. This way, no customer knows the other's email address and it appears that they are the only one receiving this particular letter.

All in all, email is the way to go in today's marketplace. Here are more reasons why you should use email in your business:

1. Signature files used with each email response can send your advertisement along with your message.

2. Delivery of Certain Products - If you sell a product online that can be delivered by email, you have saved an enormous amount of money in freight charges and your customers get their purchases almost instantly.

3. Follow up - Customer follow up made easy.

4. Sending Updates of your product or service.

5. Press Releases - Send press releases to the news media about your business.

6. Newsletters - Send out timely newsletters to your customers to keep them updated with special sales or contests.

I have two myself. One I use for advertising at FFA links and classifieds. One I use for everyday business. A third one to have "just in case". This one also makes me money to read the emails. You can have as many as you want. There are lots of places to get free email accounts. Just go to one off the search engines and type in free email and you'll be bombarded with oodles of free email sites. Just pick one you like.

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Jayne is the Webmaster at Spencer Publications. You can find her website at http://www.spencerpub.com She is the editor of the helpful and informative newsletter, Spencer's Internet Gazette. You can subscribe to her free newsletter: mailto:spencerpub@mindspring.com?subject=SUBSCRIBE