ADVANTAGES OF EMAIL MARKETING OVER DIRECT MAIL MARKETING
Email marketing is the electronic version of direct mail marketing. It is one of the oldest but still effective Internet marketing methods used by different businesses. Direct mail marketing involves writing your messages on a paper and sending them to your prospect customer’s physical address where as in email marketing your messages are sent to the email addresses of your prospects through internet. There are several advantages for email marketing over traditional direct mail marketing.
Those advantages are given below:
1 Global Reach:
An email can be sent to anyone across the globe. And ofcourse direct mails too can be, though it may take several weeks to reach the destination address. If a product has global appeal ie, if there are people across the globe who can become your customers which method will you prefer? Writing mails and posting them directly or sending an email? Definitely email marketing is the best choice over direct mail marketing for such businesses.
2 Lower cost:
How much does it cost if you are sending mails to people directly. You will have to buy paper, ink, stamps, post cards, covers… can’t all these be saved if you use email marketing? Literally email marketing doesn’t cost you anything. You can save a lot of your expenses by switching to email marketing.
3 Interactive:
Ever heard of adding graphics and videos in paper mails? No it is not possible yet. On the other hand you can do all these in an email. You can add attractive graphics, videos, logos etc in emails to make it interactive. You can literally tell them what you want to convey. Such an email will be more appealing to a customer than a silly paper mail.
4. Round the clock marketing:
You can send an email to anyone anytime. You can even schedule their timings. This is not possible in direct mail marketing. It can be only done during day time. What if a customer opposite the globe wants to contact you when he receives your paper mail? He can either call you at midnight or send back a paper mail which will again take weeks to reach you. Instead if it was an email the customer could contact you back just by replying to that email which you can check next morning.
5 Measurable Results:
Measuring is inevitable for the success of any marketing campaigns. You have to know to how many people your campaign reached and how many responded positively. In an email marketing campaign you can measure the success of a campaign. You can find out how many and who opened your emails, who all replied, how many got converted etc. Can any of the above be measured in a direct mail campaign?
6 Faster Responses:
It takes only a second to send an email. The receiver can reply your mail instantly. It can reach anywhere around the globe in seconds. This is something you can’t do in direct mail marketing. It will take ages to receive a paper mail. We live in a world where time is money why waste your money in direct mail marketing.