Email marketing is the use of email for marketing communications. As the name suggests, any email that you ever send to your customer or potential customer falls under this category. However, in general, email marketing introduction is -

• Direct promotional emails sent to acquire new customers.
• Direct promotional emails sent to persuade existing customers.
• Sending emails encouraging customer loyalty and enhancing customer relationships.
• Placing your marketing advertisements or messages in email marketing introduction sent by other people.

An email marketing introduction would be the digital equivalent of -

• Sending direct mail.
• Sending printed newsletters to people.
• Placing your advertisements and messages in subscription magazines and newspapers.

Email marketing must be permission based.

One major difference between the digital and physical methods of marketing is the requirement of permission. When direct mail or a printed newsletter is sent to people, they have a choice of either not reading it or throwing it away, unread.

However, the email version is delivered directly into the email inbox of the recipient, using the owner's email address. The recipient, therefore, has no choice but to manually filter the email, and trash it. This makes it necessary for the sender to obtain permission before the promotional email marketing introduction is sent to the recipient.

Not having this permission may allow the recipient to regard your message as unsolicited commercial email, or in other words, as spam. In some parts of the world, spamming is considered as breaking the law.

If accused of sending spam, your email accounts may be closed down, and your website may be shut off. You may even suffer considerable damage to your reputation, because of unsolicited an email marketing introduction.

It has been seen that most successful and long-term email marketing relationships work only if they are permission based. It is important here to define the permission as the views of customers and others receiving your mails and those responsible for maintaining the infrastructure of the internet.

Popularity of email marketing:

Email marketing has become popular and has proven successful for those who do it the right way. The reasons for its popularity can be attributed to -

• Lower expenses – sending an email marketing introduction is much cheaper compared to all other means of promotion.
• Direct delivery – an email reaches a person direct compared to websites, where a person has to visit the page to read the message.

Different types of email marketing:

Direct email marketing is sending your promotional message in the form of an email marketing introduction. Similar to sending bulk mail to a list of customers, here too you will need a list of customers or prospective customers' email addresses.

Instead of sending only a promotional email marketing introduction for encouraging the recipient to take action towards buying something or signing-up for something, you could send out regular emails, also known as newsletters. These may carry advertisements or promotional messages, but newsletters are designed with an aim of developing a long-term relationship with the customers.

You may also find email newsletters published by others, where you may be able to buy space to put your advertisements. Several email marketing introduction newsletters are created exclusively for selling advertisement space to others.