What is your opinion about email marketing?

[breesarrazijn]

Do think email marketing increases sales?
Do you find email markting irritating?

 

[jamjam11]

Emails are ok if done in the right way. I got talking to an American who started working for a new company here in China selling LED lights etc, I took one look at his {.com} website and laughed, Then he began to talk. LOL His boss set him a task to send out over 2000 spam emails. Here's what i said to that, It started with F" and ended with F"

Don't spam email!!
If you get people to join your site you can with very great ease add a subscribe button.

I would think cold calls would be much better business than an email that might land in there junk box.

 

[Variant4]

Do think email marketing increases sales?
Do you find email marketing irritating?

From a person who has done email marketing for different companies...... in a Nutshell.

Yes Email Marketing Does Still Work.

People love emails if its about something they are interested in.

Its not irritating for people who receive the email as they should have already opted in to receive that email. If they havn't already opted in to receive the email then you shouldn't be sending the email to them. Otherwise it will be classed as SPAM.

There are a few key factors that would make it work better than just sending emails and expecting sales.

Your website needs to be very good, as that's where your clients will be going when they click on a link in the marketing email.

If you need anymore info let me know.

 

[Elliottc26]

Hi,

Email marketing can work when you do it correctly. Like anything, the more effective and persuasive your mailing, the better the response will be.

Other methods are better such as direct mail, advertising, and websites. However, cold calling, if paying a company to do this for you, can be highly expensive per lead - as much as £114 for every lead generated.

On average, you can estimate an ROI of around 28.5%, but with a much lower response rate to other methods. Some businesses may only generate a response rate of 0.12%, which is one response per 1000 emails sent if they send ineffective emails.

Letters work better than graphics, and they need to be highly targeted, written well and be short. You can send them to opt-ins, existing customers, and even prospects if done in the right way.

In essence, it's a part of your marketing mix, but not the only part.

 

[Karllacey]

In my opinion, which has been successfully employed over 15 years - cold emails are not good irrespective of how persuasive the content is. I always recommend that you ask permission to send people emails before you do so; it shows professionalism and customer care.

As for the poster above about people loving about receiving emails. Your kidding right? I get around 40 SEO 'experts' emails a day, around 100 directory emails and around 50 that are a mixed bag of junk.

Filters are there for a reason and I have spend a couple of days blocking out all of the unwanted unsolicited emails.

My advice is ask permission always first, this is of course subjective but you will have a higher success rate from someone expecting an email than perhaps damaging your reputation by what would be considered by some people to be 'spamming'.

 

[Variant4]

If you are getting loads of emails about something that your interested in then its usually because you have signed up to something and excepted that you want to be emailed.

Therefore, if you are getting all those emails it is because you have asked to receive them.

You must have subscribed to many mailing lists.

If its from people that you havn't subscribed to then that's a different story. But it wouldn't usually be as many as you say.

Hopefully your recent email clear out should help is you have followed the unsubscribe links.

I receive emails from Groupon & Ebuyer everyday, but that's because I want to see what deals are on offer.

 

[Karllacey]

Really Variant, it is not. I haven't signed up for Viagra tablets anywhere, nor for anyone to deposit $10,000,000 in my bank from Nigeria and so on so forth.

I am guessing that there is spider software that can blast out variants of all email addresses and/or spiders that pick up email addresses on websites and nuke the web.

Not out the realms of possibility, and I have worked in the technology sector pretty much capable of running a program such as this and that was about 8 years ago...

 

[Variant4]

I get these to, but the email address that I get them on is an old one which I have used for many years and used to sign up to places when I had less knowledge of how my details would be used.

I have a new email address and have been very careful on what I do with it and I have had no issues at all and its one that is on some websites too.

That defo sounds like bots scraping websites for email addresses that you are experiencing.

I would defo recommend to remove email addresses from websites and just use a contact form with some captcha code.

I still think that email marketing when done the correct way is the best way to get information across to people that want this information.

 

[Elliottc26]

In my opinion, which has been successfully employed over 15 years - cold emails are not good irrespective of how persuasive the content is. I always recommend that you ask permission to send people emails before you do so; it shows professionalism and customer care.

Depends what you are sending, why you are sending it, and whether it's highly targeted or not.

I would always advise direct mail rather than email for advertising. However, sales emails when executed well and correctly, will gain you a positive response.

Don't send advertisements via email. Send a flyer or postcard using the post (snail-mail)!

 

[Core List]

Emails are ok if done in the right way. I got talking to an American who started working for a new company here in China selling LED lights etc, I took one look at his {.com} website and laughed, Then he began to talk. LOL His boss set him a task to send out over 2000 spam emails. Here's what i said to that, It started with F" and ended with F"

I am pretty sure i have got their emails, i don't know why the hell they want to sell me LED lights......

Back to the original question, I love email marketing, but I find it only works when people have opted in in one way or another.

I have another business separate to Core List UK that sells hospitality supplies and I use email marketing twice a month to our customers. At the start of the month, I send an email promoting our products to customers who have bought off our website. I also send a separate email that is a re-order form to our account customers. It is from software that compiles all of their orders from the past 12 months into one spreadsheet so they can easily re-order this works really well and is extremely helpful to our customers.

Then in the middle of the month, i send a separate promotional email on our products or any other message (such as Xmas closing times) to our account customers and our potential account customers. This schedule works really well and it is by far the best return on marketing spend that I have for this business.

We built alot of the email list from our account customers and potential account customers (people who haven't bought but I want as customers) through telemarketing. We used a local caller, preferably someone in house who knows the business. Got the to call our potential customers who are mostly Guest Houses, Hotels and Restaurants asked for the managers name and if they would mind if we send them an email showing what we do. I explained that we supply products that they regularly use and just wanted to email some pricing and product info.

Because we used a local caller and was very much to the point, we got an amazing response. A big percentage of the initial emails were opened and many of the prospects have stayed in our database for years and know about us. I use a soft sell approach with the emails and they buy off our website when they are ready.

This has been the marketing money I have spent by a mile.

Regards
John

 

[Karllacey]

Best way of doing it John in my opinion - double spearheaded approach email and telephone focuses people.

Congrats!

 

[jack_sparrow]

I absolutely hate e-mail marketing. Thank God for Gmail, which does a great job blocking all the spam and unwanted mail. I never even read it and always deleted it without opening.

 

[pickaweb]

Having a list is powerful.
Doing email marketing is excellent but, make sure that the people you email have subscribed to your list.
All the best.

 

[Textlocal]

Text messaging is proven to be a much more effective marketing channel than email, with greater open rates, is less resource intensive and just as easy to target your audience.

97.5% of SMS messages are read within 5 seconds of being received and response rates for mobile are 4 times higher than other direct marketing channels.

If you haven't already given mobile messaging a try, I would highly recommend it - you can tailor your activity to your budget and customers are given an opt out option if they don't want to receive any further messages.

Thanks
Jemma

 

[Andy Harris]

Back to the original question, I love email marketing, but I find it only works when people have opted in in one way or another.

I have another business separate to Core List UK that sells hospitality supplies and I use email marketing twice a month to our customers. At the start of the month, I send an email promoting our products to customers who have bought off our website. I also send a separate email that is a re-order form to our account customers.

The point about opting in is very valid and there are ways to benefit further through analytics. Many people refer to the email marketing software which tells them who opened and who clicked. However, going a bit further and using website analytics (various systems) you can focus on those people that not only clicked through from the email they received, but who went on to look at other pages of your website. These are the people probably more likely to be potential business in the future.

 

[Fengduan]

Well, email marketing is effective but too slow process. Once your target get your email he will may be save it for future requirement. the conversion rate is not really high, but still email marketing is one of the best techniques for sales increase. Each email in the email marketing chain should be sent in the certain moment of time. That is very important. I use tickletrain.com to organize that and once email is sent I do not bother about that. This tool is truly quality and will fit for any purpose nowadays.

 

[jo_max]

Do think email marketing increases sales?
Do you find email markting irritating?

Do think email marketing increases sales? - Yes if it's done properly, customer segmentation, personalisation, etc.
Do you find email markting irritating? - No, they can unsubscribe if they don't want to receive emails.

 

[Uzair Kharawala]

Email marketing is and has been one of the best marketing activity we do. We've never 'purchased' a list but have worked hard at getting people to subscribe to our newsletter / offers.

Our unsubscribe rate is extremely low and as we use MailChimp, anyone can unsubscribe at a click of a button.

Sending our offers is very quick and does bring in instant sales.

 

[jo_max]

Anyone who purchases list will fail one day...