This is a rather interesting discussion I had with a member emailing me recently for advice on the matter of email marketing. More over, whether buying email addresses for marketing purposes was worth it. The following is an exert of what I had to say on the matter;

I think you have to look at it this way; YES, email marketing can work. BUT, you have to consider looking at it from a brand perspective. If you are in it for the long hawl (which presumably if you are laying some cash and effort in on this new project to try and make things work, you are!) then do you really want to have the image of an organisation that bought email addresses and then sent unsolicited email marketing to random individuals? It only takes one person to report you to their ISP or to post on a message board somewhere that you bought their email address without their prior permission.

The simple fact is, email marketing in the format you are suggesting (buying random email addresses) will hardly ever prove to be fruitful in my honest and relatively experienced opinion. The majority (if not all) of these organisations so called supplying you with email addresses have spidered them all off the net or have somehow, indescribably, ended up in their possession. These organisations are in it to make a quick buck and really don't give a damn about providing you with quality, market targeted email addresses. I am quite happy to concede that of the 10,000 emails that you may send out (or whatever highly inflated number they claim to be able to provide you with) a few may drop in and actually make a purchase or invest an interest in what you are offering. This is all based on the fact that the email addresses provided to you are actually in use and not either made up or dormant accounts.

The more effective (and price efficient) way of doing email marketing is using other organisations already in the marketplace that have an active membership. For instance, if you were to say to me, I want an advertisement in your monthly newsletter then firstly, this wouldn't be illegal, if it was relevant to my membership and I agreed to it, it would be fine. Now that's good marketing. The reason being is you understand what you are buying, you can quantify what your buying (by comparing emails sent with the response you get) and you aren't breaking any laws or more importantly, ruining your organisations image by entering into the grey area of Internet marketing (Which I have no qualms with referring it to as exactly that). In addition to this, it creates a buzz around your offering, if other highly respected organisations are willing to write about you or to recommend your services to their readership. Now, surely that's a better way of initiating what you intend to achieve through email marketing?

I thought it might be quite a worthy thread for the forum to discuss. I'm interested to hear a few other opinions. Discuss....

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Interesting subject Anthony, and one that I've often pondered.

Finally came to the conclusion that by manually researching potential customers and contacting them as a result of visiting their site you end up with a much better conversion rate. Better to have 10% of 100 people purchase from you than 0.5% of 1000.

Of course, the opposite argument to that is that 0.5% of 10000 or 20000 would be better still but if that involves mailing lists, you do risk ruining your reputation.

Ali

Email marketing is a convenient and cost effective method for advertisment only if you use it properly to the targeted "known" readers. (marketing intelligent)

If you use unsolicited email marketing, it will be blocked by many mailbox with anti-spam filter. So the marketing result is almost zero.

A successful email marketing message should be planned and organised in a professional way with attractive picture and eye-ball attracting words, I think.

Email marketing has always been the life blood of my businesses. Your customer and prospect list is most likely the biggest and most important asset any company has.

Spamming to 100,000 email addys may be good for a quick buck, but where does that get you in the long run?

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David

Some interesting thoughts from you three.

David, you mirror my own thoughts. Sending out so many emails to potentially irrelevant clients MAY bring back SOME response, but in the long run, it could do so much more damage to the reputation of your organisation that it simply wouldn't be worth the short term revenue.

Ali, where does it become conveniently targeted email from unsolicited? I am just curious because some documentation on this subject say that unless those whom you contact specifically ask for an email of that nature it becomes unsolicited and results in spam. What are your thoughts on that?

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Yes, it's an interesting one. UK anti-spam laws really only cover contacting consumers (ie: Joe Public). As far as I am aware, there is much more flexibility when it comes to contacting businesses, so long as you give them the opportunity to refuse further mailings from you.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3120628.stm

It's easy to spot the difference between someone who has spammed you from a mailing list, and someone who has researched your business and has chosen to email you about a product/service that they genuinely believe could be of interest to you.

I suppose it's a thin line between unsolicited mail and business generation. Lets try this as a hypothetical example ...


Someone on this forum runs a website selling iPods. Someone, somewhere has a great deal to offer on wholesale iPods. They've researched things, know you specialise in that type of thing, think it's very likely that you'll be interested. They send you a mail explaining what's on offer. Is that spam, or not? I reckon it's just a business proposition.

Of course, all of this relies on people being sensible and putting in the hard work to find potential customers.

Ali.

More often than not people think its annoying so attaching this to your product/service is not good for your business.