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e-Mail marketing
Online Advertising
e-Mail marketing
Opt-in e-mail advertising | Permission marketing
E-mail marketing is a form of
direct marketing which uses
electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or
fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail
sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail
marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
- Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a
merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage
customer loyalty and repeat business.
- Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or
convincing old customers to buy something immediately.
- Adding advertisements in e-mails sent by other companies to their
customers.
Researchers estimate that as of 2004 the E-mail Marketing industry's revenues
has surpassed the $1 billion/yr mark.
The Good
E-mail marketing is popular with companies because:
- It is extremely cheap. Compared to direct mailing or printed newsletters
the costs are negligible. The advertiser does not need to pay for
production, paper, printing or postage.
- It is instant, as opposed to a mailed advertisement, an e-mail arrives
in a few seconds or minutes.
- It lets the advertiser "push" the message to its audience, as opposed to
a website that waits for customers to come in.
- It is easy to track. An advertiser can track
bounce-backs, positive or negative responses, click-throughs, rise in sales.
- Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have
opted in (consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of
interest to them
- It has been proven successful when well done.
- When most people switch on their computer the first thing they do is
check their e-mail.
- Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger other messages
to be automatically delivered.
The Bad
Many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate with existing customers,
but many other companies send unsolicited commercial e-mail, also known as
spam.
Illicit e-mail marketing antedates legitimate e-mail marketing, since on the
early Internet it
was not permitted to use the medium for commercial purposes. As a result,
marketers attempting to establish themselves as legitimate businesses in e-mail
marketing have had an uphill battle, hampered also by criminal spam operations
billing themselves as legitimate.
It is frequently difficult for observers to distinguish between legitimate
and spam e-mail marketing. First off, spammers attempt to represent themselves
as legitimate operators, obfuscating the issue. Second, direct-marketing
political groups such as the U.S.
Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have pressured legislatures to legalize
activities which many Internet operators consider to be spamming, such as the
sending of "opt-out" unsolicited commercial e-mail. Third, the sheer volume of
spam e-mail has led some users to mistake legitimate commercial e-mail (for
instance, a mailing list to which the user subscribed) for spam — especially
when the two have a similar appearance, as when messages include
HTML and flashy
graphics.
Due to the volume of spam e-mail on the Internet, spam filters are essential
to most users. Some marketers report that legitimate commercial e-mails
frequently get caught by filters, and hidden; however, it is somewhat less
common for e-mail users to complain that spam filters block legitimate mail.
Companies considering an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their
program does not violate spam laws such as the
United States' CAN-SPAM Act, the European Privacy & Electronic Communications
Regulations 2003 or their Internet provider's acceptable use policy. Even if a
company follows the law, if Internet mail administrators find that it is sending
spam it is likely to be listed in blacklists such as SPEWS.
E-mail marketing terms
- Auto-responders
- Automatic replies sent by the e-mail software of the recipient after
receipt of an e-mail.
- Bounce backs
- e-mail sent back to the server that originally sent the e-mail.
- Bounce rate
- Ratio of bounced e-mails to total e-mails sent.
- Bulk, bulking
- Terms used by spammers to refer to their line of work. Mostly synonymous
with spam or UCE.
- Call to action
- Words in the e-mail that entice recipients to do something.
- Click-through
- The action of clicking on a link.
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Ratio of click-throughs to total e-mails sent.
- Commercial e-mail
- Any e-mail sent for commercial purpose; for instance, an advertisement
to buy a product or service, an order confirmation from an online store, or
a paid subscription periodical delivered by e-mail. Commercial e-mail is
not synonymous with spam; see unsolicited commercial e-mail
below.
- Demographic
- Characteristic of a group of e-mail recipients.
- Double opt-in
- A term coined by spammers to refer to the normal operation of secure
electronic mailing list software. A new subscriber first gives his/her
address to the list software (for instance, on a Web page) and then confirms
subscription after receiving an e-mail asking if it was really him/her. This
ensures that no person can subscribe someone else out of malice or error.
The intention of the term "double opt-in" is to make it appear that the
confirmation is a duplication of effort; and thus, to justify not confirming
subscriptions. Mail system administrators and non-spam mailing list
operators refer to confirmed subscription or closed-loop opt-in.
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- Double opt-out
- Same as Opt-In, but the recipient unsubscribes instead of subscribes.
Borderline spam operations frequently make it difficult to unsubscribe from
lists, in order to keep their lists large. Hard-core spam operations make it
impossible -- they treat opt-out requests as confirmations that the address
works and is read.
- E-mail Blast
- An e-mail sent to multiple recipients, intended to inform them of
announcements, events or changes. A variety of methods can be used to send
the same e-mail to multiple recipients: for example: using options within an
e-mail program, using the mail merge option within a word processing
program, or using a commercial e-mail list programs.
- Express consent
- A recipient agrees actively to subscribe by checking a box on a web
form, paper form or by telephone. A recipient not unchecking a box is not
express consent.
- False positives
- E-mail that is not spam but is labeled spam by a spam filter of the
recipient. Note that e-mail marketers may have different opinions of what is
"spam" than e-mail recipients.
- Format
- E-mails can be sent in plain text, HTML, or Microsoft's rich text
format.
- Hard bounce
- Bounced e-mail that could never get through because the e-mail address
doesn't exist or the domain doesn't exist.
- List broker
- Reseller of lists of e-mail addresses.
- List building
- Process of generating a list of e-mail addresses for use in e-mail
campaigns.
- List host
- Web service that provides tools to manage large e-mail address databases
and to distribute large quantities of e-mails.
- List manager
- Owner or operator of opt-in e-mail newsletters or databases. Also
software used to maintain a mailing list.
- Look and feel
- Appearance, layout, design, functions & anything not directly related to
the actual message on an e-mail.
- Open rate
- E-mail open rate measures the ratio of e-mails "opened" to the number
sent or "delivered." The ratio is calculated in various ways, the most
popular is: e-mails delivered (sent - hard bounces) /unique opens.
- Opt-in
- The action of agreeing to receive e-mails from a particular company,
group of companies or associated companies, by subscribing to an e-mail
list.
- Opt-out
- A mailing list which transmits e-mails to people who have not subscribed
and lets them "opt-out" from the list. The subscribers' e-mail addresses may
be harvested from the web, USENET, or other mailing lists. ISP policies and
some regions' laws consider this equivalent to spamming.
- Personalization
- The use of technology and customer information to tailor e-mails between
a business and each individual customer. Using information previously
obtained about the customer, the e-mail is altered to fit that customer's
stated needs as well as needs perceived by the business based on the
available customer information, for the purpose of better serving the
customer by anticipating needs, making the interaction efficient and
satisfying for both parties and building a relationship that encourages the
customer to return for subsequent purchases.
- Privacy
- The Privacy Act of 1974, Public Law 93-579, safeguards privacy through
creating four procedural rights in personal data. It requires government
agencies to show an individual any records kept on him/her; also requires
agencies to follow "fair information practices" when gathering and handling
personal data. It places restrictions on how agencies can share an
individual's data with other people and agencies and also lets individuals
sue the government for violating its provisions.
- Rental list
- A mailing list that can only be used once or for a limited time. The
user of the list pays the owner of the list less money than if he/she would
have bought the list outright. Note that this term is usually used for lists
generated by address harvesting or other means; the investment made by the
list creator does not correlate with the permission of the e-mail
recipients. Many firms who "rent" or "buy" a list face spam complaints
afterward from persons who never subscribed.
- Segmentation (or Targeting)
- The use of previously gathered information to send e-mails of a
particular offer to a subset of the list.
- Soft bounce
- A soft bounce is an e-mail that gets as far as the recipient's mail
server but is bounced back undelivered before it gets to the intended
recipient. it might occur because the recipient's inbox is full. A soft
bounce message may be deliverable at another time or may be forwarded
manually by the network administrator in charge of redirecting mail on the
recipient's domain. On the other hand, a hard bounce is an e-mail message
that has been returned to the sender because the recipient's address is
invalid.
- Spam or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial e-mail-UCE)
- From the sender's point-of-view, spam is a form of bulk mail, often sent
to a list obtained by companies that specialize in creating e-mail
distribution lists. To the receiver, it usually seems like junk e-mail. Spam
is equivalent to unsolicited telemarketing calls except that the user pays
for part of the message since everyone shares the cost of maintaining the
Internet. Spammers typically send a piece of e-mail to a distribution list
in the millions, expecting that only a tiny number of readers will respond
to their offer. The term spam is said to derive from a famous Monty Python
sketch ("Well, we have Spam, tomato & Spam, egg & Spam, Egg, bacon &
Spam...") that was current when spam first began arriving on the Internet.
SPAM is a trademarked Hormel meat product that was well-known in the U.S.
Armed Forces during World War II.
- Spam filter
- Software that is usually installed in the users e-mail client, with the
purpose of avoiding spam e-mail to get into the client's inbox or at least
to be flagged as such.
- Subject line
- It is one of the most important issues in e-mail marketing. The better
the subject line of an e-mail, the better probability of being opened by the
recipient.
- Targeting (or segmentation)
- Sending e-mails to a subset of a mailing list based on a specific
filter, trying to improve CTR and/or open ratios.
- Tracking
- The act of reporting CTR, open ratios, bounces, etc.
- Trigger based messaging
- Triggering a message based on an event or interaction with a previous
message. Popular for customers who request more information
- Unique click
- During a particula period, a visitor to a website could click several
times on a particular link, but during that period it is counted only as one
and considered a unique visitor.
- Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE)
- Commercial e-mail, usually of an advertising nature, sent at the expense
of the recipient without his or her permission. Sending UCE is an offense
against all major ISPs' terms of service, and is a crime in some
jurisdictions.
External links
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This guide is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
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