Let’s briefly review the three types of email marketing:
When you send a promotional message in the form of an email, which might be a special offer or announcement about a new product. You need to collect a list of prospective customers and their email addresses.
Much like a newsletter, a retention email, as its name suggests, aims at retaining existing customers. It will aim at developing long-term impact on the recipients, besides carrying advertisement s or promotional messages. However, the reader would like to read the email only if it offers them value rather than a mere sales message.
Find newsletter published by others instead of producing one yourself and pay them to place your advertisement along with that of theirs in the emails they send their customers. This can also be called buying advertisement space in others emails.
What’s “permission”?
Permission is the most necessary aspect of responsible email marketing. Before sending a commercial email to an individual, you need their permission. If the permission is not there, the recipients might treat your message as spam or even unsolicited bulk email. In fact, you can establish long-term relationship with customers if their permission is solicited. You would never wish that your email be treated as spam.
Your email account might be suspended if you anybody accuses you of sending spam. This might have a bearing on your reputation, which is not a good sign for your business growth.
Permission might come in the form of the customer marking a checkbox labeled as “please send me news about product updates by email” if they buy anything from your online store. Customers have every right to rescind that permission.
You do not want to send spam!
If you are accused of sending spam, then you may find your email accounts closed down, your website shut off, and your reputation in tatters. In some parts of the world,you may even be breaking the law.
Quite apart from the sepractical considerations, there is also a strong argument which says that long-term successful email marketing relationships with customers and others can only work anyway if they’re permission based.
The big question, of course, is what constitutes permission…and that is the main subject of debate. It’s important to remember that it’s not your views, or even the views of the majority, that count, but the views of those receiving your emails and those responsible for administering the infrastructure of the Internet.
An example of permission is when your customer buys something from your online store and also ticks a box marked “please send me news about product updates viaemail”. You now have “permission” to send that person product updates by email, provided you also give them the opportunity to rescind that permission at anytime.
