Types of email marketing
1) By customer consent — mail is either opt-in, which customers have agreed to receive, or opt-out, which they have not. Email marketing is the discipline of running opt-in mail.
| Category | Opt-in email | Opt-out email |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Legitimate mail sent to members who agreed to receive it when they signed up | Mail sent to people who have not agreed to receive it |
| Recipients | Members who opted in | Spam sent at random to unspecified people who are not members |
2) By purpose and format — email can be classified in several ways by purpose and format, and for online stores newsletters related to product sales take the largest share.
By purpose
Sales and promotion, advertising, publicity, affiliate marketing, customer care and more
By format
Newsletters, referrals, customer support, event announcements, surveys, coupons and more
Drawbacks of email marketing
Email is strongly associated with spam. Email marketing is meant to be customized advertising aimed at a clear customer group, not spam, but it still has the following limits.
Few people read it
With so much email arriving these days, many people do not read what they receive, and many are simply not interested.
Easy to send, so inboxes overflow
Being easy to send is email's biggest advantage, but it also means customers' inboxes are always full of messages from many companies.
Deleted on arrival
As a result, most emails are sent straight to the trash the moment they arrive.
Email marketing response
in numbers
What typically happens when you send email to about 10,000 members.
Sent to about 10,000 members
About 15% are not received because of wrong addresses or full mailboxes
That means 850 emails are opened
10% of readers, or 85 people, visit the site, about 1% of everyone sent to
Email marketing is better suited to gaining members through events than to driving website visits.
How should you
use email marketing?
Customers receive so much email that they delete anything that offers no benefit or interest right away. In the past the key question was how many addresses you could collect, but today what matters is being seen among countless emails instead of going straight to the trash.
To make email marketing succeed as a tool for online stores and open marketplaces, you need varied customer analysis and constant effort.
Get started with Bonsler
Email marketing overview
See what email marketing is, its advantages, and how to run it successfully.
Read the overview →1:1 hands-on training
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We handle the whole process, from newsletter planning and design to sending and performance reports.
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