Does Email Marketing still cut it ?

11 May 2007 - By Sean Fishlock

The answer is a resounding yes.  Email may not be overall the most effective marketing method these days, but it is still the cheapest and can still be very effective.  In this blog we tell you why and let you in on some secrets for  maximising the medium whilst respecting privacy and discretion. 

Admittedly, there are many spam filters out there attempting to block your email communications, and the Spam Act of 2003 is very strict, but the good news is that emails still save people time and people still read them and non-profits are still able to use it for direct marketing.

If you need to send a newsletter to keep your members in touch, send a once off bulletins, specials or press releases then you simply shouldn't look past email as a marketing tool.  Opt-in newsletters can be a great way of both instilling customer loyalty and gaining the mindshare and trust of potential customers.

Compared to direct mail, email offers a huge range of benefits.  Not only does it really help to save on paper (and therefore the environment) as well as the cost of postage stamps, but it offers a great deal more in terms of tracking, profiling and statistics.

So what are the basic tools you need to maximise your email marketing campaign ?  

To get the most out of an email campaign, you'll need:

  • List Management - filter and analyse your target groups.  Import and export lists from external databases.
  • User Opt-in and Opt-out - template to enable people to join your mailing list or leave it.
  • Graphical Emails - send flexibly designed HTML enabled emails for high impact.  To reach the maximum audience possible, ensure that if users don't have HTML enabled, then they receive a plaintext equivalent.
  • Personalisation - use mail merging features to add impact to your emails and ensure that the message gets across.  Send targetted emails and customised content based on profile groups. 
  • Response Tracking - find out who has read your email and which links that they clicked.
  • Automatically Archive on your Website - having the option to keep copies of your email or newsletter on your Internet site gives users the convenience of reading it later online and optionally expose of the content to search engines like Google to increase your website traffic.

Datalink's latest Freestyler 5.1 web content management system has such an email facility which offers all of these features and is fully integrated into a user management system, enabling the same users to be shared with online discussion forums, customer extranets and blogs.  What's more is that it is compatible with external databases such as Concord to synchronise your lists.

Even if you don't use Freestyler to manage your webiste, you can still get access to email management.  Datalink offers the email system as rented application service to get you up and running straight away.  Just ask us how.

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