Of the vast array of potential advertising methods, email marketing is becoming increasingly more popular, and rightfully so. With the implementation of a well maintained database, timely emails, and the creation of good relationships, email marketing can definitely be one of the most valuable tools to you as an internet business person. Whether you are attempting to create exposure for a product, generate leads for a different product, or create sales for an affiliate link, email marketing is quickly becoming the go-to method for any of these.

Why It Is Valuable

As I explained, if you have a well maintained database, the sending of personalized emails becomes child’s play. You can send an email with a person’s name, user name, or anything else you have (of course make these legally purchased contacts), to any number of people, next to instantly. Of course once these numbers start reaching significant 6 figures and higher, this becomes more difficult, but still.

Similarly, as you develop relationships, you can continually market via email and keep your customers knowledgeable and even willing. For example, Amazon does a great job of this and will send emails to their users now and then reminding them of products they might like (based on recent purchases) or of new deals that are being offered. Both of these are great ways to keep your customers interested, and both of these are made extremely easy with a well maintained database.

Likewise, timely emails are definitely a key. If you are marketing for lawnmowers and it is winter season, that is probably not a time when there will be a demand for lawnmowers. To appropriately make the most of this opportunity, you must research current trends, sports, politics, etc and find out what is going on with consumers. After you acquire that information you can more easily identify what consumers are interested in purchasing.

What If…? (As usual, here is a hypothetical example)

Hypothetical Analysis

Send email to 10,000 people (friends, friends of friends, “friends”)
Email reaches 2,000 people (Targeted emails, potential high interest)
If only .05% of these people respond (sign up, purchase)
You just made 10 sales

As I said, your turnover rates can become even higher than that based on the strength of your data.

Also, it is important to realize that the cost of sending out that many emails… next to 0. Depending on your ISP (internet service provider), you may be able to send out unlimited emails each day - in which case, those 10 sales you generated, came at super-profit if you maintain your data well.

Other Methods Of Thinking

As you do business with people over time, it would be a good idea to save their contacts in any form of database. Every person you meet is a potential customer, because when it comes down to it… each and every person on this planet is a customer. Therefore, as you build relationships, let the computer store what your friends and contacts like and enjoy, and base your campaigns on their interests. If you meet someone who is a huge sports fan, and one of your affiliate programs launches a new 523,356 sports channel package, send your friend an email. Chances are they will not be angry, but instead either intrigued, or neutral.

Negative Side Effects

Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to track how effective your email marketing campaigns are due to lag time. If you send out an email to 100,000 people, you may have people sign up for your services over the course of 2, 3, or even 6 months and longer. Because of that, it is difficult to allocate where exactly these customers came from, but this problem occurs with other types of advertising as well.

When Email Marketing Becomes Detrimental

Like many forms of advertising, email marketing can definitely turn into something bad. As everyone knows, spam is not something that we enjoy to receive. However, if you are using this email marketing as a means to contact your friends, or “friends” about potential products or services they would actually like, it may not be viewed as negatively.

The worst is when you engage in types of stealth marketing, or where you try to remain anonymous. Then you are simply bombing out millions or billions of emails to anybody with an email address, and people can become very annoyed by this.

Last Remarks

All in all, I would say that email marketing is very effective if used properly. If you plan to use it like it should be used, then it will be very effective. However, when you decide to use it deceptively, it becomes a burden not only on your targets, but a large waste of your time. Why? Who reads spam mail anymore? Consider that as you work on your campaigns.

Other News

I am thinking of implementing a new theme here at Online Cash Flow. It will hold 2-4 sponsor spots and I will be looking for 125×125 sponsors if anybody may be interested. I am not sure of the prices or when (if soon) this will take place. I guess it depends on the number of sponsors.

Have a great day!

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