Types Of Email Marketing(Sources):

Let's briefly review the three types of email marketing:

1. Direct email

Direct email involves sending a promotional message in the form of an email. It might be an announcement of a special offer, for example. Just as you might have a list of customer or prospect postal addresses to send your promotions too, so you can collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses.

You can also rent lists of email addresses from service companies. They'll let you send your message to their own address lists. These services can usually let you target your message according to, for example, the interests or geographical location of the owners of the email address.

2. Retention email

Instead of promotional email designed only to encourage the recipient to take action (buy something, sign-up for something, etc.), you might send out retention emails.
These usually take the form of regular emails known as newsletters. A newsletter may carry promotional messages or advertisements, but will aim at developing a long-term impact on the readers. It should provide the readers with value, which means more than just sales messages. It should contain information which informs, entertains or otherwise benefits the readers.

3. Advertising in other people's emails

Instead of producing your own newsletter, you can find newsletters published by others and pay them to put your advertisement in the emails they send their subscribers. Indeed, there are many email newsletters that are created for just this purpose - to sell advertising space to others.

How Email Marketing Works?

Email marketing works for a variety of reasons...

• It allows targeting
• It is data driven
• It drives direct sales
• It builds relationships, loyalty and trust
• It supports sales through other channels

Modern email marketing services and solutions support database integration, segmentation and various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis.
And every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine your approach and messages.
Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty.

Why is email marketing so popular?

Why is email marketing so popular?

 People unfamiliar with email marketing often wonder what all the fuss is about. Didn't spam kill email as a marketing vehicle? And if spam didn't kill it, what about blogs, Twitter and all the other clever ways we can communicate online? Isn't email outmoded?
Email marketing is so popular because:

• sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication
• email lets you deliver your message to the people (unlike a website, where the people have to come to your message)
• email marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right.

Those wondering about the benefits of email marketing in today's ever-changing online and marketing environment will find the answers below.

It works

Businesses engage in email marketing because it works. And works well. Here are the numbers...

• 72% of respondents to an Econsultancy survey in early 2011 described email's ROI as excellent or good. Only organic SEO scored better.
• According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing was expected to generate an ROI of $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print cataloges.
• The ForeSee Results 2010 report on the effectiveness of social media found that promotional emails were the second biggest influence on retail website visits. The biggest influence was familiarity with the brand.
• A MerchantCircle survey of over 8,000 local business owners in the US found email marketing cited by 35.8% as a Top 3 most effective marketing or advertising method. Only social network profiles and search engine marketing scored higher.
• In Datran Media's 2010 Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 39.4% of industry executives said the advertising channel that performed strongest for them was email. This was the top result.
• The Ad Effectiveness Survey commissioned by Forbes Media in Feb/March 2009 revealed that email and e-newsletter marketing are considered the second-most effective tool for generating conversions, just behind SEO.
• A summer 2009 survey of Irish marketers found 79% rating email marketing as important or very important to their marketing strategy.

The money is following the results...

• A January 2011 survey by BtoB Magazine found 63% of respondents likely to increase spending on email in 2011 (second only to websites) with 29% keeping spend constant.
• The 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook Survey from the Society of Digital Agencies revealed that 70% of brand marketers planned to invest in email marketing in 2011. This was the joint highest result.
• A DMA survey of US and Canadian marketers in late 2010 found email was the most widely used web-based direct marketing technique.
• A late 2010 customer survey by Campaigner found 61% intending to do more email marketing in 2011, and 33% planning to continue at the same level.
• A 2010 survey of 2,500 marketers by AWeber found 82% intending to increase their email marketing efforts over the next 12 months.
• The 9th Annual Merchant Survey (2010) conducted by the e-tailing group asked merchants to say which initiatives they would be using to improve website performance. The top answer, cited by 79%, was "send more targeted email".
• A December 2009 survey of 300 email marketers by Silverpop found that their companies were feeling the effects of recession, but "four out of 10 marketers reported that their email budgets in 2010 would increase, and nearly half (47 percent) said their budgets would stay the same" .
  
• A November 2009 survey of senior marketing executives by the European Interactive Advertising Association revealed that 61% of respondents planned to invest more in email.
• A Q2 2009 survey of over 5,000 senior US executives revealed that email marketing was the channel most likely to see an increase in marketing budget .
  
• Seven out of ten UK marketers surveyed by the DMA in 2009 expected expenditure on email marketing to increase over the next 12 months .
• In August, 2009, Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual Communications Industry Forecast suggested total spend for email will grow from $11.9 billion in 2008 to $27.8 billion by 2013

Email Marketing

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications.

What sort of email?

In its broadest sense, the term covers every email you ever send to a customer, potential customer or public venue. In general, though, it's used to refer to:

• Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy again
• Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship
• Placing your marketing messages or advertisements in emails sent by other people

Give me an analogy...

You can think of these three main forms of email marketing as the electronic equivalent of:

• Direct mail
• Sending people a print newsletter
• Placing advertisements in subscription magazines and newspapers

There is, however, one extremely important difference - the issue of permission.