Direct email marketing

Direct email marketing. A lot of marketing tools: some are more effective than others under certain circumstances. The main thing - to choose wisely and be able to use correctly.

It's no longer a secret and not a sensation that the strategy of direct marketing, particularly direct email marketing and email marketing, can attract customers and make sales transactions the most efficient, and most importantly, more economical and faster than traditional advertising. Especially in today's oversaturated market with all sorts of advertising messages when people are close to a general advertising information.

But in what cases the use of a particular tool? How much is advisable to use one or the other tool? On what basis to prefer one of them? Is it possible to replace one another? Can we now say that direct email marketing is displaced marketing by e- mail, because e-mail is now almost free.
Let's break down the advantages and disadvantages of e-mail marketing and direct email marketing.

Total dignity that unites these tools - is that through their marketing messages are delivered to potential customers directly, without going through mass advertising, quickly achieving the desired results in significant savings in the marketing budget.

Now consider the features of the application of each tool separately.
Let's start with e-mail marketing. Its advantages are:

1. Economy. The main advantage of the unconditional and e-mail. E-mail marketing is worth a penny, and often completely free. Compared to traditional advertising just does not make sense. The difference is obvious.

2 . Instant delivery of emails. Almost instant delivery of marketing messages to any point on Earth. Along with the economy it's just phenomenal advantage of e- mail, which today is perceived by us for a long time as a matter of course.

3 . Options for fast feedback. To respond to your message by e- mail, the recipient is enough to make just a couple of clicks.

4 . The ability to automate the process of forming your own unique database of email addresses of potential customers, and deliver messages to them. Today, knowledge of modern technologies to automate most of the marketing tasks. In particular, the use of autoresponder allows you to create your own 100 % voluntary list of emails 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on complete autopilot, without requiring any salary or vacations or sick.
Now let's talk about the features of e-mail marketing, which, if ignored, they can instantly devalue the undeniable advantages of this tool are listed above:

1. Forming the base of emails (subscription list) of your potential customers takes time, as it should be 100% voluntary! What does this mean? This means that all members of your address database must give their voluntary consent to receive communications from you. Otherwise, your message will be regarded as spam and immediately destroyed upon receipt. Moreover, this approach can generate a negative image about your company.

2 . Not all of your potential customers use e-mail on a regular basis, and generally have an email address. Today, unfortunately, my own statistics is relentless in this regard.

For example, once I was preparing the base of potential customers for a wholesale trading company for direct mail.

Identified base consisted essentially of individual entrepreneurs with a "point" on the commodity markets. So 75 % of the identified recipients simply did not use e-mail or use it very rarely, and even there were those who could use it only with the help of someone else (eg , son ). Yeah, me too, this fact at the time threw in some shock. But, nevertheless, it is a fact. And it can not be overlooked when choosing a marketing communications.

3. How quickly you can respond to your message by e- mail, so you can close quickly, deleted or ignored. It plays an important role your subscription base - as far as it is well targeted, as well as the content of the letter itself - how it is made correctly in terms of marketing effectiveness.
Now turn to direct email marketing. The main advantage of this marketing communications with the target audience is:

1. The possibility of purposeful formation of a unique address potential customer base for the concrete- planned marketing campaign . Naturally, it takes possession of conformance techniques. Depending on the market in which you operate from your target audience, there are techniques to form unique lists of potential customers.

2 . Possibility of guaranteed communication with almost every potential consumer of a particular segment. Often, it so happens that the only possible way to communicate with potential customers is the only postal address . And it often happens that just such target consumers can be more than 60%. For example, coverage of all the residents of homes for the area A fitness club, located in the area. In that case, when available for direct communication is only a postal address, a more efficient means than direct mail, I do not know yet. If you know, please write to me.

3. Marketing message in the form of a physical letter has the advantage of long-term exposure. The recipient can examine the contents of the letter at a convenient time, re-read the letter again and again, to study it to friends, colleagues. The lack of pressure from the seller, the protective reflex of advertising allows the recipient to be able to read the proposal.

4. By using direct email marketing, you are not restricted to proplachennoy advertising space. You can send as sales letters, but also the so -called direct-mail packages, which give the highest response than just a letter or brochure. This response provides the obligatory presence of the main elements of an effective direct mail package, as well as the technology of their formation.

The disadvantages of direct mail :
1. The implementation of direct email marketing requires money: the cost of sending letters (depending on the weight class, mode of delivery), the cost of manufacturing printing industry - the elements of direct email package, forming a unique address list.

2 . Direct mail marketing is not as "mobile" as an e-mail. At the time of delivery of messages requires that pulls the response time from weeks to 2 months.

3 . Direct mail marketing can easily become a "clumsy hands" in unaddressed mail advertising. I can not specify this point . Many people confuse these two communications. Unaddressed direct email advertising is a kind of SPAM, Junk Mail, which discarded the recipient immediately. The response to such communication tends to zero. Checked For any one time and not just me. Although some of the techniques of direct mail marketing allow for unaddressed mail newsletter and get the result. But they are quite expensive. I would have used them in the last turn. In the case of email these "tricks" does not pass.
Each of these instruments ( direct mail and sending e-mail) performs a specific task assigned to him. Both means of direct communication is a powerful tool for the formation of a "fat" client flow and profit.
In particular, the physical mailing list allows you to "get" virtually every potential customer the required segment of your target audience. And more effective means for solving this problem than direct email marketing, personally, I do not know.

Finally, it is unwise to ignore the email- marketing technologies that let you create lists of email addresses of targeted customers on an ongoing basis and implement marketing communication with each participant list quickly and at virtually no cost.

In addition, these two tools can often involve very different segments of your target audience. For example, for the promotion of my course I now use the same active and e-mail marketing and direct email marketing.
Through email marketing my course found their buyers not only in the cities of Russia, but also in countries near and far abroad.

But when I connected my favorite direct email marketing (actually, I'm doing a month May-June ), this tool is provided in three weeks selling my course twice. Although direct mail, I spent only two target segments and only in my city.
So, back to our topic today, I believe that today the overwhelming amount of the advertising market, both of these marketing tools are indispensable for most marketing tasks. I therefore take this opportunity to strongly encourage you to use these two strategies for its marketing activities to form a "fat" client flow, providing fast sales.