January 2010 - Earning, Blogging, Tips and More

As I've said in my previous post Why Venture In E-mail Marketing?, e-mail marketing is one of those marketing strategies that uses e-mail as a medium of commercial communication and selling to a specific audience. In simple terms, it is sending an e-mail to a potential or current customer for the purpose of acquiring a new one or engaging in repeat business. But with all those basic information, the next dreaded question comes in: where do I get the e-mail addresses of potential consumers?

Your e-mail marketing software would be practically useless not with a good bunch of marketing data to boot. What you really need before starting your e-mail marketing campaign is to get hold of sufficient telemarketing lists. What's this, you ask. A telemarketing list is a set of e-mail addresses of both business entities and potential consumers. You have e-mail addresses of businesses to gain potential partners. You also get e-mail addresses of potential consumers, those who might be interested in your campaign. But where to look? Some companies specialize in e-mail marketing lists. They provide such lists to businesses involved in e-mail marketing or telemarketing. They have done their research and analysis of data well to generate such effective list for companies to use.

The important thing in e-mail marketing is you get a list of potential buyers and not a list of uninterested buyers. For example, you might want to acquire a mortgage mailing list when you sell related services or products. You don't want to market your mortgage services to teenagers, right? A mortgage mailing list must have contained e-mail addresses of professionals or parents. Before you buy a mailing list, make sure it hits your target audience or consumer group. That way, your e-mail marketing campaign would be highly effective.

E-mail marketing is one of those marketing strategies that uses e-mail as a medium of commercial communication and selling to a specific audience. In simple terms, it is sending an e-mail to a potential or current customer for the purpose of acquiring a new one or engaging in repeat business.

Online businesses that have established blogs and websites soon will think about marketing their products or services. Aside from the normal online marketing/advertising, e-mail marketing also boasts its effectiveness. In 2006, around $400 million were spent on e-mail marketing alone.

So why venture to e-mail marketing? It is popular because of the following reasons:

it is low cost since it collectively sends information to a wide network of e-mail users at once
marketing can be tracked, so as ROI
time delivery is fast (seconds only)
you don't have to wait for the customer to visit your site (compared to online advertising)
repeat business transactions are easy
almost all people now have e-mail addresses (half check them everyday)
paper-free
metrics of user responses/reactions is possible

The biggest pros of e-mail marketing would be its affordability and hassle-free use. Once you want to get started with e-mail marketing, you can choose to opt to an e-mail marketing software that could help you build your marketing list fast and easy. For example, iContact. iContact is an option for anyone who wants to send out newsletters. Some of their good features are its inbox deliverability, easy-to-use interface, affordable prices, sleek templates for e-mail, autoresponders, surveying and blogging capabilities and more.

iContact currently has over 15,000 customers and 100,000 users. The product is used primarily by small businesses but also has a number of Fortune 500 companies like Bank of America, Ford, Nissan, Super 8 Motel, and International Paper, and political campaigns like Barack Obama '08.

iContact is only one of those e-mail marketing software that could help you in your e-mail marketing. To get started, you must know first what your business needs, who your customers are, their interests and from there, you can kick start your e-mail marketing and move forward to a growing business.