BLOG

EMAIL MARKETING - MAIN ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS


WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING

E-mail marketing is a type of digital marketing that involves using email to interact with potential and existing customers for the purpose of promoting products, services, brand awareness, providing information, making sales, and supporting customer relationships.

The primary method of email marketing involves sending targeted email campaigns (email newsletters), which can include various types of information:

• Promotions and discounts. Sending emails with special offers, discounts, or promo codes to encourage customers to make purchases.

• Informational messages. Providing useful information that could be interesting to customers, such as articles, news, and tips.

• New product or service announcements. Sharing information about new products, services, and improvements to existing ones.

• Personalized recommendations. Sending recommendations based on customers' previous purchases or interests.

• Greetings. Sending welcome emails to new subscribers, thanking them for purchases, and acknowledging important dates like birthdays.

• Event notifications. Invitations to exhibitions, webinars, conferences, and more.

• Reviews and ratings. Encouraging customers to leave feedback about products or services.

• Customer support. Answering questions, providing post-purchase assistance, and resolving potential issues.

MAIN ADVANTAGES

As we can see, e-mail marketing takes on a significant portion of marketing tasks and processes and is considered an indispensable tool in various business sectors due to its numerous advantages over other marketing methods. Here are some of the key benefits:

• Low cost. Compared to traditional marketing methods, email marketing is known for its relatively low implementation costs. Utilizing third-party services for setting up and sending campaigns saves time and doesn't require substantial investments.

• Direct audience contact. Email marketing allows sending messages directly to the email addresses of potential and existing customers, creating a direct communication channel without intermediaries.

• Personalization. With collected customer data, personalized messages can be created that better match consumers' interests and needs.

• Coverage. Since most people regularly check their email, email messages have a great potential to reach a wide audience. The open and read rates depend on your strategy and content quality.

• Measurability. The ability to precisely measure campaign results, such as email open rates, link clicks, conversions, etc., helps understand the strategy's effectiveness and make necessary adjustments.

• Audience segmentation. Dividing the audience into segments and sending specific messages according to interests and needs.

• Automation. Many processes in email marketing can be automated using specialized tools, allowing efficient campaign management.

• Content creation. Creating text and graphical content for email marketing is relatively simple, especially with the use of templates from external services.

• Interaction opportunity. Customers can reply to emails, ask questions, and provide feedback, enabling active engagement.

However, it's important to understand that the effectiveness of email marketing can depend on various factors such as content quality, target audience, interaction strategy, and more.

Usually, a successful email marketing strategy involves maximum consumer segmentation and the creation of appropriate interaction scenarios with each segment. This means creating a sequence of emails with relevant content based on the segment and the consumer's previous actions, where each action (opening or ignoring an email, reading content, clicking a link, conversion, etc.) triggers the next communication stage. In other words, scenarios are designed in a way that the recipient's action determines the type of email they will receive next - whether it's a personalized discount, a list of promotions, a reminder of an unfinished purchase, information about similar products, and so on.


USAGE LIMITATIONS

The implementation of e-mail marketing can encounter several legislative limitations, and one must be cautious to avoid damaging their reputation. For successful use of email marketing, it's important to adhere to norms and rules related to confidentiality and spam regulation:

• Collecting contact information. Before adding a user to your mailing list, you must obtain their consent. Typically, this is achieved through an "subscribe to newsletter" option on your website or through a subscription form.

• Additional consent. Besides the general agreement to receive newsletters, it's crucial to allow users to choose the specific types of messages they want to receive (promotions, news, informational emails, etc.).

• Unsubscribing from emails. Each email must contain an option to partially or completely unsubscribe from further messages. This is essential from both a consumer perspective and a legal requirement in many countries.

• Owner contacts. Every message should include information about the sender - the company name, postal address, contact details. This is mandatory in some countries.

• Relevant content. The content of the emails must be truthful and aligned with promises made during the email collection process.

• Avoiding spam. Sending spam is unacceptable. Emails should only be sent to those who have consented to receiving them.

Apart from adhering to these rules and norms, there are other potential problem areas to consider when planning to use email marketing tools. Ignoring these points can significantly affect campaign effectiveness and create negative perceptions among consumers:

• Technical errors. Formatting mistakes, incorrect display on different devices, browsers, and email clients can create a negative impression. Thoroughly testing sent materials across various device types and software is essential.

• Message frequency. Excessive messaging can risk being categorized as spam.

• Poor audience segmentation: Sending identical messages to all subscribers or irrelevant information regardless of interests and needs can lead to a loss of interest in the newsletter.

• Lack of audience engagement. If there is no interaction with the audience, questions and feedback are ignored, leading to a loss of interest and loyalty.

• Low-quality content. Subpar content, uninteresting material, or lack of personalization can result in subscribers ignoring emails and subsequently low conversion rates.

To avoid these issues, it's important to comply with email marketing standards and rules, create high-quality and engaging content, interact with the audience, and consider their needs and feedback.

In conclusion, e-mail marketing is an effective tool for audience engagement, product promotion, and brand building. It enables direct contact with customers, personalization of messages, reduces costs compared to other marketing tools, and provides the ability to measure results. However, successful application requires adhering to standards like consent for email receipt, providing opt-out options, and handling personal data with caution. Key aspects include quality content, audience interaction, analytical use for strategy improvement, and continuous result monitoring.

Achieving the commercial objectives of a company through effective marketing requires a deep understanding of the market situation, consumer needs, the ability to analyze and explore alternatives, and a creative approach to problem-solving. Our company has extensive experience in defining optimal marketing strategies for our clients' businesses, creating a strong brand and market positioning, as well as developing a marketing mix and implementing the chosen strategy. You can familiarize yourself with the services and solutions our company offers on the "Services" and "Solutions" pages, respectively.