October 15, 2004

Email is an effective marketing and communications tool

Email can be a powerful way to speak to your customers. But only if you do it right. Email is by far the most popular activity on the Internet. People who have email report that they check it regularly, at least a few times each week.

In Canada, as of 2003, about 64 percent of households were connected to the Internet (Source: Statistics Canada). But many Canadians access the Internet from locations outside the home, such as schools or work. Some estimates put the total number of Canadians using the Internet today over 75 percent.

In the business community that percentage is even higher. Some studies put it as high as 80 or 85 percent. The important point in all of this is that any way you cut it, today the number of people who use the Internet is greater than the number of people who don't use it. And that trend will only continue.

We can also say that most businesses have an email address. To put it even more concisely: most of your customers use the Internet.

It should come as no surprise then that marketers would like to get their hands on all those email addresses. If you have an email account you are no doubt familiar with spam emails, messages you didn't ask to be sent that sometimes cram your inbox. Spam is a lazy attempt at using email as a marketing tool, it's a prime example of how to do email marketing the wrong way.

So what's the right way? Well, for starters you don't send email messages to people who didn't ask for them. You must take the time and put in the effort to build a permission-based mailing list. That means you have to get someone's permission before you put them on your email list.

For many companies this list will include their best customers and prospects. And building the list can be as easy as inviting customers and prospects to join. This can be done through a company's website, by sales reps in person, over the phone, or even through a targeted campaign designed to build your email list.

It may seem like a lot of work just to build up an email list, but consider that email allows you to speak to your customers and prospects one on one, basically with the click of a button and at a very low cost. You can send out information about new products or services, special offers, company news, and much more. You can continually communicate and build ongoing relationships with the people on your email list.

Now that's powerful marketing.

The flip side though is that you must treat your email list with respect. You must have a strong privacy policy in place, and you must never abuse the email addresses on your list.

At Arxus Web Group, we're building our own email list by offering a free email newsletter which helps companies improve their websites. We never put anyone on our list without inviting them, and we take an extra step to confirm that the person wants to join the list. We also state our privacy policy clearly.

If you want to know more about setting up your own email list, please click here to contact us.

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