REVIEWS
Role Of E-Mail Marketing In E-Commerce
E-mail marketing in the simplest terms can be defined as sending out of commercial messages to a specified group of people through electronic mail. E-mail marketing is all about making use of email in various sectors of E-commerce such as making business deals, sending advertisements and promoting the company brand among so many others. Many businesses that are using the E-commerce method are greatly adopting the strategy of e-mail marketing because of the way it enhances business communication, it is very effective yet really cheap, and has so many other roles in E-commerce as we shall be elaborating in this article. First we shall be understanding E-marketing in detail, how it works, the different types and then discuss its role in E-commerce.
TYPES OF E-MAIL MARKETING
They are three types of E-mail marketing and these include direct mails, transactional mails and mobile email marketing.
Direct emails; direct emails also known as interruption based marketing which is mainly used to communicate about promotional messages such as a new list of products or special offer. In this case a company gathers a list of customers email addresses that they would like to direct such messages to.
Transactional emails; these are emails used depending on the relationship that a customer has with a particular company. The major aim of a transactional email must always be to finish or better yet confirm a commercial transaction previously agreed upon between the person sending the message and the recipient. Such emails are of great importance to the company reason being they create a stronger bond between customers and product or service providers because it is through these transactional emails that beneficial business deals are concluded. Transactional emails also include promotional messages.
Mobile email marketing; due to the technological advancements all through the world, email marketing has now taken a new direction where it has gained lots and lots of traffic. Mobile email marketing is majorly done with the use of smart phones and tablets which most of the people today own. Through mobile email marketing it is extremely easy to direct messages to potential buyers and expand a customer base however it is not overly effective since people have the tendency of creating multiple email accounts for various uses.
ROLE OF E-MAIL MARKETING IN E-COMMERCE
E-marketing contributes a lot to e-commerce and its role is through various endorsement or persuasive techniques, these techniques are what we are discussing below;
- Marketing using E-business advertising
E-business advertising is the effort of putting information out to the public in order to conclude any deal between a seller and buyer. Email marketing entails the use of e-business advertising where by companies display a brand out to the public to make it very easy for customers to remember and also make it unique from many others. This is usually done TV shows that people love so much, promotional website links and poster publicity among others.
- Marketing using coupons
These are usually places on some of the most visited or liked sites by people who are always using the internet therefore an internet coupon is placed on that site in order to attract more and more people into purchasing products and services through e-commerce. Companies can get in touch with such websites so that they are permitted authority to use such coupons to increase their customer base.
- Marketing using free trials
Everyone loves free things and such strategies are used by companies to attract more customers, one of those strategies is through free trials. With free trials purchasers are given the chance to access a service at no cost at all but only for a few days before they can go ahead a purchase a product. Any client who accesses such an offer will be forced to invite many others and thus increase sales.
- Marketing using poster advertising
Poster advertising is the use of web page poster advertisements with persuasive messages but placed on popular websites, sites that are known by almost everyone. This is because such websites are always visited it would make no sense putting an advertisement on a website that is not even known. These posters are advantageous to both the website and the company using it for advertising reason being as the poster adds beauty to the website’s page and draws more people to visit the website, it also contains a link so that as soon as a client clicks on that link they are redirected to a site through which they can purchase that particular product. There are different ways of applying advertisement posters such as flashing or rolling words, use of bright colors that will easily get someone’s attention. Terms of employing such poster advertisements are agreed upon between the company and website owner since there are two way benefits for both parties.
- Marketing using discounts
All kinds of clients whether they are low income earners or high income earners are attracted by discounts therefore vendors through e-marketing strategy announce their discounts all over the internet. Discount announcements can be done by correspondents, websites and periodicals among many others, as soon as customers see the announcement of a discount offer they ensure to purchase the product while the offer still lasts.
- Marketing using free shipping
Some online companies use free shipping as a strategy for grabbing bigger numbers of clients, as they advertise their products they also pin to it that they ship the products at completely no cost to certain areas and this is what attracts some people to engage into buying products via the internet. This has given email marketing credit over all other techniques that were used in the past.
BENEFITS OF EMAIL MARKETING ON E-COMMERCE
After looking at the role of email marketing in e-commerce it is also important that we look at the effects that have come from using the strategy. Email marketing comes with so many effects most of which are positive and very good for the development of e-commerce all over the world plus only a few negative ones that can easily be straightened out.
- Real time messages; with email marketing all you need is just few hours to deliver any important message and the message can be received as soon as it has been sent or just a short while after it has been sent. This has eliminated the extremely long, expensive and tiresome process that was used before email marketing where you have to have letters printed out and then later delivered to clients that you wish to communicate to. This means that there is completely no limit to what time you can send out your message to your clients.
- Reduced effort and time; back in the day one had to endure the lengthy methods of communicating with consumers or fellow business professionals however email marketing has put an end to all the wastage of effort and time. Using email marketing, one can deliver a message to over 200 customers in just one or two hours because all they need to do is verify the mail and make any changes with graphics, choose who they want this message delivered to and thereafter press the send button. The process has become that simple and short, so there is absolutely no need to hire so many people.
- Better communication between sellers and buyers; unlike with all other forms of marketing such as TV and radio broadcast advertisements and print mail campaigns where you have a dictated format of reaching out to customers, with email marketing you have the chance to have a completely personalized message. While you communicate with customers today you can add up a lot more persuading information like the history of your business and also sweet talk them into trying out your products which is not possible with other channels of marketing. With email marketing it is very okay to express your personal character and get close with customers to create trust and confidence between you and your client.
- Frequent communication; since sending out email messages requires just a few seconds, a seller can contact their clients as often as they find it necessary. With email marketing you are free to communicate with your customers daily if you so wish although to avoid frustrating the buyer it is advisable to only contact them just once a week. Without email marketing the best one could do is communicate with customers just once in a month or even two which is very bad for sales. But considering how easy email marketing has made everything communicating with customers frequently has overly been simplified.
- More focused marketing campaigns; email marketing allows you to divide up your data base information and the biggest advantage of this is that you can send out more specific messages to consumers. For example if you are dealing in selling women’s clothes on line and in that particular month you find that will only be selling jeans, with the use of email marketing you can easily look out for customers that are more interested in jeans and only send messages to those. This is a very good way of increasing sales rather sending collective messages to people who are not even interested in what you are marketing to them.
- Market testing messages; a person with good marketing skills must be able to test the market to find out what will work best for them and while using email marketing it is extremely simple to test the market. Email marketing offers you a few easily understandable tools that you can use to make a survey through your market to discover the best ways to gain sales or get consumers to respond. For example if you have a list of 100clients, you can customize two different advertisements in different font and color and send both to your list of clients and later find out which one gets better response.
- Reduction in overhead costs; email marketing is by far the cheapest marketing channel reason being it doesn’t require too many workers to reach a big number of clients, all you need is one good marketer and excellent email marketing program in order to get to the right market in the best possible ways. This way you will have cut off all the costs of paying designers and market analysts, advertising costs, costs of printing and so much more.
- Ability to track sales and customer participation; there are several amazing accurate email marketing platforms that you can use and these provide all the necessary information about sales and how customers respond to your messages. Through email marketing you will find hoe many people read your email, those that clicked on a link, those that did not receive the message and so much more that is of great importance to your business. And with all this information gathered it will definitely be easy for you to figure out how your sales.
- Easy spread of information; while using email marketing, it is super easy to reach out to all your customers to inform them about any special offers such as new stock, bonuses and discounts. As soon as the message is sent, all clients will be rushing to your online store to check out whichever new offers have been granted and this is only possible through email marketing because it is the fastest way of spreading out information.
In conclusion, before the rapid growth in technology not many vendors were looking at E-marketing as the best strategy to develop their businesses however as of today email marketing has overly been adopted by most of the online business professionals. The more technology develops the more online businesses move on to the technique of marketing their products and services through email. The only disadvantage that has been noted is the big number of spam in email marketing but besides that this is a really incredible technique to the development of E-commerce. Considering how cheap, fast and easy email marketing spread out information there is no other marketing technique that can compete with it.
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