Harvard Business School’s Thumbs up for E-mail Marketing

What’s E-mail Marketing? 

E-mail marketing is creating commercial messages about your business and sending them to a group of people using their email (Netregistry, 2012). It can be sent to a cold list or current customer database. The current customer database is known as opt-in e-mail advertising. This allows customers to add their email to receive marketing information about that business. In Australia, according to the Spam Act 2003, companies are required to have an opt-out option, that being an unsubscribe bottom to their online marketing. 

There are 2 types:

• Transactional E-mails: relate to a customer’s action with a company. E.g. e-mail receipts.     
• Direct E-mails: Sending e-mails to advertise and promote offers.

      Advantages and Disadvantages of E-mail Marketing

 

Advantages	Disadvantages
ROI can be tracked by companies Cheaper and faster. Customer more likely to be interested as they chose to receive the e-mails.	Internationally, there has been legislation passed to prevent spam e-mails and protect people’s privacy. In Australia this governed by Spam Act 2003.

Harvard Business School study on E-mail Marketing

Recently the Harvard Business School conducted a study on e-mail marketing. The study found that e-mail marketing is not used as much as it should be (Hughes, 2013 in Editorial, 2013). Brands can promote themselves at a low cost. 

Personally, I do not find this study surprising. E-mail marketing has more control than other promotional tools such as t.v or newspaper. You do not have complete control over who can view your ad on t.v or newspaper. However, with e-mail marketing you will be directing customers who want to receive your marketing promotion, as they’ve op-ted in on your site. Most importantly, you are able to track conversions from your e-mail marketing, thus have an accurate account of how much this promotional tool is working, rather than conservatively forecasting whether or not a promotional tool is working. Evidently, we can view the considerable benefits of maintaining a database of your customer.

Reference

Editorial, B. 2013, ‘Email Marketing for the Win, According to Harvard’ [online] Available from 

http://www.brafton.com/news/email-marketing-for-the-win-according-to-harvard (Accessed 12/1/03)

Netregistry, 2012, ‘What is E-mail Marketing?’ [online] Available from http://www.netregistry.com.au/resources/what-is/online-marketing/what-is-email-marketing/ (Accessed 12/1/03)

‘Spam Act 2003’ [online] Available from http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/consumer_info/frequently_asked_questions/spam_business_practical_guide.pdf (Accessed 12/1/3)