Email Marketing – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

With the advent of the Internet and millions of people making use of the email system there came a brand new form of marketing that could be targeted directly at each individual email mailbox. Email marketing is a type of direct marketing that is reminiscent of the flyers and direct mailers that have been sent to postal mailboxes for years. With this type of marketing every email that is sent out is sent for the sole purpose of selling a service or merchandise to a new or existing customer. According to a survey completed in 2006 companies in the US spent over $400 million on email marketing.

The Good

There are many reasons why email marketing has become so popular with many companies. By using mailing lists it is possible for a company to target specific groups of potential customers and send out one mass email that will reach them for a relatively low cost as compared to using the postal service. According to research email marketing is now second only to search marketing in profitability and requires far less investment than direct postal mail or sending out printed newsletters.

By using emails the sender can use software that can track their emails and see how many people are opening them and actually responding to them. In this manner they can track the success rate of their marketing campaign and make adjustments to try and boost their success rate. This allows them to push their sales directly to more potential customers. One more advantage of using this type of marketing is that it is very eco friendly since it uses no paper whatsoever.

The Bad

Thanks to the mass influx of spammers, the genuine email marketers have gotten a bad rap making it very hard for them to do business. In the earliest days of the Internet the illicit marketers got the advantage as the Internet was not originally allowed to be used for sales. This meant that the spammers got a head start and now many email servers treat all sales emails as spam especially if they are part of a bulk email sending of unsolicited sales copy.

Because so many spammers do everything they can to make their emails appear as legitimate as possible it can be very difficult for anti spam software to distinguish between legitimate marketing emails and the junk mail from spammers. To combat this many email marketers now use the double opt in system that requires the potential client to confirm their decision to request information by clicking on a link in a confirmation email.

Even today with all the technology available most email marketers still report having difficulty getting their emails through the system and past the spam filters. While spam filters are a necessary evil due to the high volume of junk email that is often laden with viruses and malware, they play havoc on the legitimate email marketers.

The Ugly

For every move that the legitimate marketers come up with to be able to continue with their businesses legally and successfully, the spammers come up with even more to force their emails through and many people simply delete all emails that come from an unknown source. This has had a significant effect on the overall profitability of email marketing.