Email Marketing / eNewsletter / EDM

Research has estimated that as of 2004 the Email Marketing industry's revenues has surpassed the $1 billion/yr mark. It is a very effective, yet affordable form of marketing medium.

Email marketing (or EDM) is popular with companies because:

• It is least expensive compared to other media investments such as direct mail, printed newsletters or other online marketing channels
• Return on investment has been proven to be high
• Email marketing is instant. Once sent, the message reaches the audience immediate. This is unlike direct mailers whereby it can take days
• Advertisers are able to "push" the message to the audience. This is unlike web sites, which wait for visitors to come
• It is easy to track and more interactive. Advertisers can track users via web bugs, bounce messages, un-subscribes, read-receipts, click-throughs , etc. These can be used to measure any positive/negative responses, correlate sales with marketing.
• 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
• Email is the most popular activity online, surpassing searches
• Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger other messages to be automatically delivered.
  
  

Essentially, there are 2 types of email marketing:

1. Unsolicited Bulk Email
2. Opt-in Direct Email

1) Unsolicited bulk email marketing essentially means that you are sending emails to unqualified recipients, or those people that have not given any prior approval for you to send any marketing materials to them. This practice is very controversial and there are antispam legislations in certain countries to protect the recipients. In Singapore, unsolicited email sending is allowed with certain conditions. Senders need to ensure the following:

- Include a "Adv" in the email subject line so that recipients can easily identify the email as advertisement

- Include an "Opt out" link at the bottom of the email or some of methods for the recipients to unsubscribe

2) Opt-in Direct Email is a commonly accepted Internet marketing solution. Here, your recipient is aware that he/she has subscribed to your mailing list. They can be site visitors who have approved to receiving commercial emails from you when they visited your site. Or they can be registered users at your site. As the Internet grows rapidly, this method is very useful to remind visitors that " Your site exist ", and they have visited your site before.

Our Services:

To start an effective email marketing campaign, you will need to have a database of subscribers [or use our database] so that you can send out regular eNewsletters. Below is a brief description of email marketing services that we provide:

1) Design of HTML newsletters

2) Using our email marketing (EDM) software [Download/Hosted edition available]

3) Provision of reports and statistics [No. of newsletters that are read/unsubscribed etc]

4) Training and support provided