E-mail Marketing – Glam or Spam?
E-mail marketing is one of the most popular tools that businesses use to communicate with current and potential customers. It’s not only simple to do and inexpensive, but e-mail marketing can be another great avenue for building lasting customer relationships.
However, building an e-mail list can be quite challenging. Businesses typically use social media, along with offers of free information products and discounts, to get consumers to sign up for their e-mail list. Unfortunately, these great incentives are not always enough to convince one to hand over their e-mail address and have even more e-mail messages delivered to their already exploding inbox.
As a result, some businesses make the decision to buy e-mail lists from vendors, which use various methods to collect e-mail addresses. For example, some vendors buy e-mail lists that are created from events, such as industry trade shows, where attendees provide their e-mail address during the registration process. Online ads and surveys are other tools that vendors use to collect e-mail addresses, which they then turn around and sell.
What many companies do not realize is that using a purchased e-mail list is a violation of your e-mail marketing client’s rules, assuming you are using a reputable company, and is considered spam. As a result, your e-mail marketing client could decide to close your account. In addition, because the recipients most likely do not know of your company nor did they sign up for your e-mail list, there is a decreased chance that your e-mail message will even be opened, thereby reducing your response rate and return on investment.
In addition, using a purchased e-mail list can damage the reputation of your company and your brand. Remember that social media can be very powerful, and you certainly do not want consumers posting messages that your company is spamming them with unwanted e-mail messages.
Though it may take time, it is highly worth it to build a glamorous e-mail list as compared to using a spam e-mail list.