Marketing Strategies
E-mail Blasting
Written by Richard San Juan for Gaebler Ventures
The rise of the Internet has fueled a new generation of innovation. Internet has allowed many businesses to become successful without sometimes having to pay for large overhead costs. This created many opportunities for entrepreneurs to emerge, especially online. Many of the new start-up companies did not have the traditional marketing department to drive revenue, so they needed to find alternative ways to give exposure to their products and/or services they were selling. Enter e-mail blasting.
What is e-mail blasting?
E-mail blasting is an important tool, especially for online businesses, that uses the Internet to its advantage.
E-mail blasting utilizes a large mailing list to send an e-mail indicating the features of the sending company's product and/or service.
With how pervasive the Internet has become in our society, that electronic message can reach more potentially interested individuals and businesses than if they had marketed their product through traditional means. The only drawback for using e-mail blasting as a business strategy for an entrepreneur is that it could quickly be regarded as spam or junk e-mail.
Getting Past Spam Filters
Having said that, there are a number of ways to maximize the positive effects gained from e-mail blasting.
To minimize the possibility of your ad/promotion from being disregarded or blocked by spam filters, craft a well-written subject line. The recipient will often ignore poorly written subject lines.
Other actions can be taken to prevent your e-mail blasting to be marked as spam. Entrepreneurs who decide to utilize e-mail blasting can join feedback loops. Feedback loops enables the online marketer/entrepreneur to analyze which recipients are marking the messages as spam. This is important, because it allows them to remove them from the subscriber list.
Moreover, inactive subscribers should be removed from the mailing list, because they are more apt to mark the message from the e-mail blast as spam. Also, entrepreneurial marketers should not hesitate to request that subscribers to the e-mail blast add the e-mail address to their address book or white list.
The more targeted the message is, the more chance for success. If possible, try to conduct the e-mail blast through static (the same) IP address.
Making the Most of Each Opened E-Mail
If the recipient of the e-mail blast actually goes ahead and opens it, it is essential to keep the reader interested to continue so that the user will click through until the landing page.
The landing page contains your message or sales pitch of why the recipient should purchase your product. The message should include specific benefits and convey them in a concise manner to get the recipient to purchase a product or service. In addition, it is important to diversify the content of the e-mail so that the e-mail blast is not limited to solely a particular group of people.
When done correctly and efficiently, e-mail blasting is a valuable tool of direct online marketing that reaches the targeted market segment.
Richard San Juan is currently pursuing an MBA degree with an emphasis in Finance from DePaul University in Chicago. He is particularly interested in writing about business news and strategies.
Share this article
Additional Resources for Entrepreneurs
Conversation Board
Please provide your advice, comments and questions regarding e-mail marketing tips and best practices for e-mail blasts.