Definition of Email Marketing

Email marketing is the process of disseminating a commercial message to a group of potential customers using email. This typically involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Over time, this activity can also be used to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.

A new world with an increasingly connected consumer

According to studies & research, as of 2012, there are 17.5 million active internet users in Malaysia. Out of this pool of users 92% of these users send and receive email actively. This represents an enormous opportunity for companies to reach out to an audience of diverse affluence and backgrounds with their products & solutions.

Direct Email (Unsolicited Email)

Direct email entails sending an email to communicate a promotional message directly to the consumers without their explicit consent. Some companies collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses on their own, or they end up buying or renting a database of email addresses from email-marketing companies.

Permission Marketing (Opt-in Email)

Permission marketing is a method of advertising via email whereby the recipient of the advertisement has given explicit consent to receive it. This method eliminates the disadvantages of email marketing. When this method of email advertising is used, the material that is emailed to consumers will be “expected” and has a higher likelihood of a positive response. Of course in order to improve results, ideally opt-in email advertisements will need to be more personal and relevant to the consumer than untargeted advertisements because there has been prior engagement with the consumer and some personal details are already available.

Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are a genre of emails are triggered based on a customer’s interaction with a brand. These typically involve emails that ask you if you’d like to continue where you left off if you timed-out from an online shopping basket, or even confirmation emails that contain a list of suggested items with discount coupons that you can use on your next purchase.

What is used to measure the success of Email Marketing?

If your business intends to engage potential customers and reach out to them through the use of email, it is important to understand some key metrics that you will encounter throughout your engagement process such as Reach, Engagement and Conversion in order to have a better picture of the performance of your Email Marketing activities.

Reach

Reach is defined by the number of people who can potentially receive to your email. Typically this will be represented by the number of unique emails you have in your database of contacts.

Engagement

Engagement is a general term used to indicate interactions between the brand and it’s audience. Typically with email marketing, this is measured by the action that recipients take such as when they read your email, click on a specific product or service to find out more, or even choose to unsubscribe to your email.

Conversion

Typically, when we talk about email marketing, there is always a cost involved to prepare and send the email, and there is also a goal to be achieved. In its simplest form, imagine a catalogue with a list of items sent over an email.

If a client clicks through the email, and chooses to buy a dress online, the proceeds from the sale will be attributed to that email. With that, we are able to define how the email marketing campaign leads to the sale.