Leveraging e-mail marketing for cost-effective marketing
"An email address is the most important thing you can gather in terms of currency," E-mail Vision strategic consultant, David Hughes was quoted as saying by TravelMole at the CIMTIG and Designate co-ordinated seminar at the World Travel Mart show in London last week.
How true! The title of the article that I am referring to sums it up well-- "marketing that costs pennies, not pounds." An opt-in e-mail address is as valuable, if not more, to a marketer today as a mailing address or a telephone number was a few years ago. While the e-mail id gives you the address to reach your target customer, the 'opt-in' gives you the license to knock on his door... the opportunity to present your prospect with the goods/service you are trying to sell. Permission marketing via e-mail is probably one of the most effective means of keeping your prospect 'warm' and interested.
The key point of the talk that I refer to above was that the potential of e-mail marketing was considerably under-utilized in the travel industry. It seems a bit ironical, though not entirely surprising (I hope that doesn't sound like a paradox!). The travel industry has been one of the early adopters of most successful online marketing techniques, and therefore one would expect it to be maximizing on the e-mail marketing opportunity. At the same time, I am not entirely surprised at the reportedly lower-than-expected adoption because I believe marketers are wary with all the anti-spam regulations that are coming to be in place. Increasingly, the penalties for spamming in different parts of the world are getting stringent (as this post will tell you), and with often a very thin line separating a legitimate e-mail campaign from what a user perceives as spam, marketers could well be erring on the side of caution.
I believe the opportunities from good and responsible e-mail marketing aren't limited to the travel industry. We affiliates could leverage this successfully for reducing our marketing costs considerably for the range of products we market. Traditionally, most affiliates may not have used it as much because they have probably driven traffic through other means (or just been passive). Many have not even tried to build a relationship with the visitors to their site.
Yet, I am pretty certain that this is not sustainable in the longer term. The only way forward for affiliates/publishers is to build a continuous relationship with a potential customer. What better way of doing it than getting the site visitor to part with his/her e-mail address, in return for the prospect of getting some real value-- be it in terms of information or great offers. There is an investment in terms of your time and effort to provide that value to the user, but as you will find out, it is well worth it.
Just a word of caution-- respect that permission that the visitor has given you to knock on his door!
Until next time,
Ben Flux
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