|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
All Email is Local -- by Johnathan Jackson eMail marketing: it's not just for the big players anymore. According to a new study, small businesses in the US are turning to e-mail marketing in droves. And the results are impressive. The study found that 11% of small businesses used e-mail marketing in 2000. By the end of this year, 16% of small businesses will be using e-mail marketing, and that figure will ramp up to 42% by 2005. Spending by those small businesses on e-mail marketing was $211 million last year but that will balloon to $2.2 billion by the year 2005. These are encouraging numbers. While much attention has been focused on huge brick-and-mortar companies using e-mail as a marketing tool, we now see that the smaller players are getting in on the act. In the past, small companies could never hope to compete with the Fortune 100 in terms of direct marketing dollars. But compared to other forms of direct marketing (e.g. direct mail and telemarketing), e-mail is extremely inexpensive. In other words, the mom and pop convenience store now has a potent marketing tool to compete with the huge conglomerate at the strip mall. The key to e-mail's power, particularly at the local level, is that it is targeted and personal. Indeed, no marketing communications medium exists that is more targetable, customizable and flexible than e-mail. That is why e-mail is revolutionizing direct marketing. eMail direct marketing, when done correctly, can overcome the limitations of traditional direct marketing by offering limitless targeting ability at pennies per e-mail and allowing marketers to have a one-to-one conversation with each of their customers. With proper targeting, tracking tools and a carefully built opt-in list, e-mail can be highly personalized to the needs of individual customers. Communications sent on behalf of companies from messaging solution providers can be targeted and customized using sophisticated database marketing techniques. The technology can capture and track individual responses throughout the campaign, "learn" more about customers from response and purchase behavior, and refine customer profiles for future communications. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
