Email Marketing

Challenges of Email Marketing

By George Christodoulou

According to Forrester Research, internet users spend more than 35 percent of their time with emails. Thus, emails have enormous potential as far as building and managing customer relationship is concerned. Perhaps, that’s the reason why email marketing has become the new catchphrase among entrepreneurs. However, despite of its benefits, email marketing is inflicted with countless challenges. Some of the major challenges of email marketing are as follows:

Quality of Email Addresses

The greatest challenge associated with email marketing is compilation of the list of email addresses. Lack of proper email-address list is one of the main reasons for the failure of email marketing campaign. Hence, when you prepare the list of email addresses, one of the first things that you should do is to test the quality of email addresses. You should gain customer’s permission to use his/her email address.

One commonly used method to do so is to send an automatic message informing the customer that you intend to add his/her email address to your list and ask them to confirm the acceptance of your offer. Another technique is to request the customer to enter his/her email address twice. These easy techniques will help you to compile an authentic list of email addresses for your email marketing campaign.

Informing and Gaining Customer Permission

Merely preparing a list of email addresses is not enough. It’s your duty to inform the customer how you intend to use his/her email address and then seek his/her permission to use the address in that manner. This process is important because it will protect you from undergoing unnecessary trepidations like lawsuits and financial losses. Moreover, your reputation will also not be adversely affected by the label of spammer.

Maintenance of Email-Address List

Your email marketing campaign can never be successful unless you maintain regular contact with your customers. Regular maintenance of email-address list is the only way out. Keep in mind that email address list is a perishable commodity. NFO Research Group found that approximately 32 percent of customers change their email addresses after a year. Hence, it is essential to check the validity of email addresses regularly.

You should provide your customers easy methods to update their email addresses. Furthermore, you should also provide ways to reaffirm what kind of information your customer has agreed to accept. This step will not only help you to protect your

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About The Author
George Christodoulou is a search engine optimization specialist as well as an internet marketer who know a vast amount about other subjects related to the biz.
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