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Email Marketing: Advantages, Disadvantages and What to Avoid

On any given day chances are you see at least one marketing email in your email inbox.  That's because they do work to a degree, even we have a mailing feature.  Of course the problem of constant email blast by companies and scam email blast leads people to often refer to all advertising emails as spam.  But there are things you can do to successfully using email advertising.

Lets start by looking at why you should use email marketing.
  • It can keep previous customers up to date.
    • When someone makes a purchase you should offer them the chance to sign-up for your mailings.  This way you can let them know about new products and upcoming sales.
  • If you provide a place on your website for people to just sign-up for your mailer, you can also being in potential new customers from people who are unsure if there is anything they want.
  • You can segment your mailing list so you only send advertising about particular products to certain people.  This is easy to do if the person is a previous buyer.

The problems with email marketing however, can make you wonder if you should bother.
  • First and foremost is that a lot of people see any advertising emails as spam and just delete them without even opening them.
  • Unless people forward the email to friends and/or family your mailing list is going to be limited to people who have signed up for it.
    • You do not want to use email marketing as your only marketing option, just one of them.

Here is the important part of this post, things that you should avoid when sending out an email blast to people.
  • Do not purchase a list of emails to send your advertising to.  If people just start getting your advertising for no reason, they are likely to get upset and block your emails, and possibly speak ill of your company.
  • Do not fill your email with a lot of links to different pages.  A single link to your sales page is enough.  Not only do a lot of email clients place emails with tons of links in to the spam/junk folder, but people often gloss over them.
  • Do not send out advertising on a daily basis.
    • You will need to gauge the people on your list and see how often they will deal with getting emails.
  • Do not send them out just because.
    • A single email for a sale that runs from say December 1st to December 20th is enough. People do not want to see an email a week before, at the beginning of the sale, half way through and then on the last day.  Its too much.

A few more things to consider about this.
  • Not everyone is going to be able to view images on their emails, depending on the email client they are using, where they are checking it, etc.  So do not fill your email with a lot of images.
  • Always include a way for people to be removed from the mailing list, and it should be simple.
  • Do not make your email address something odd, make sure people know it is coming from you before they open it, many marketing emails that do not show who the email is from get deleted without being viewed.

The idea is basic, use email as part of your advertising regime.  Do not make it the only thing you do.  You want you business to grow and word of mouth will only take it so far.

Good Luck and Good Sales