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Introduction
Email marketing is the practice of utilizing email to communicate a commercial message, usually to a list of recipients. Email marketing can be broadly defined as any email sent to a prospective or existing customer. It entails sending emails to request business, make sales requests, or beg donations. The three main goals of email marketing techniques are typically to increase brand exposure, trust, or loyalty.
The phrase typically refers to email marketing campaigns that aim to share third-party advertisements, build a merchant's relationship with existing or past customers, promote customer loyalty and repeat business, attract new clients or persuade existing ones to make an instant purchase.
History
Email marketing has developed quickly in tandem with the
21st century's technological advancements. Email marketing was less successful
prior to this expansion, when the majority of customers thought of emails as
novelties. Through the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET),
Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) distributed the first bulk
email [1] to about 400 prospective customers in 1978. He asserted that this led
to DEC product sales of $13 million[2] and emphasized the effectiveness of mass
email marketing.
But in the 1990s, when email marketing became a more
successful direct communication tool, people started calling it
"spam" and started using filters and blocking software to remove
information from emails. In order for email marketing to be successful,
marketers have to figure out how to get material in front of users without having
it blocked by spam filters and other automated systems.
Due to the difficulty in precisely defining target markets,
marketing campaign effectiveness has historically been difficult to gauge.
Email marketing has the advantage of enabling ROI analysis as well as
efficiency measurement and improvement.[Reference required] By enabling
real-time user input and tracking campaign effectiveness in terms of market
penetration, email marketing gives marketers insight into the reach of a
communication medium. However, it also means that certain advertising
strategies, like television commercials, cannot fully convey their more
intimate quality.
Advantages
Email
marketing is popular with companies for several reasons:
Compared to traditional mail, email marketing is much
speedier and less expensive because the recipient bears the majority of the
expense.
Email marketing solutions offer comprehensive analytics, enabling companies to
monitor key performance indicators such as open rates and click-through rates
to assess the efficacy of their campaigns.[Reference required]
Time and effort can be saved by using automation technologies to make it
simpler to plan and send emails at particular times or in response to user activities.
Email service providers, or ESPs, can be used by companies and organizations
that send a lot of emails to collect data about recipient behavior. Businesses
and organizations can better understand and utilize customer behavior by
utilizing the insights that are obtained from consumer response to email
marketing.
Almost half
of American Internet users check or send email on a typical day, with emails
delivered between 1 am and 5 am local time outperforming those sent at other
times in open and click rates.
Disadvantages
Email deliverability remained a problem for reputable
marketers as of mid-2016. In the United States, legal email servers had an
average delivery rate of 73%; 6% of emails were screened as spam, and 22% of
emails went missing, according to the research. Australia delivers at 90%,
Canada at 89%, Britain at 88%, France at 84%, Germany at 80%, and Brazil at
79%, all of which do better than this.
When deciding whether to use an email marketing program, businesses must ensure
that it does not contravene any spam laws, including the European Privacy and
Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, the Controlling the Assault of
Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM) in the United
States, or the acceptable use policy of their Internet service provider.
An
overwhelming amount of commercial email or untargeted emails can be irritating
to consumers. This irritation can lead to consumers unsubscribing from all
messages or building a negative brand association. Untargeted emails lead to
low click through rate, hindering marketing campaign performance.
Legal requirements
Australia
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (often
referred to as "ACMA") is responsible for enforcing the Australian
Spam Act 2003. The act provides other important information, including a
definition of the term "unsolicited electronic messages" and details
on how unsubscribe mechanisms for commercial messages must operate. There is a
range of fines; Virgin Blue Airlines (2011), Tiger Airways Holdings Limited
(2012), and Cellar master Wines Pty Limited (2013) were all fined AU$110,000 in
total.
Canada
On July 1, 2014, the "Canada Anti-Spam Law" (CASL)
became operative.[18] Users must explicitly or implicitly consent to CASL, and
the maximum penalties for noncompliance are $10 million for enterprises and
CA$1 million for individuals.
Britain and the European Union
In 2002, the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications was introduced
by the European Union (EU). The Directive's Article 13 forbids using private
email addresses for commercial endeavors. Unsolicited emails may only be sent
with the recipient's prior consent under the Directive's opt-in framework,
which does not apply to corporate email accounts. In the UK, members of
unincorporated partnerships and sole traders are afforded the same level of
protection as private people..
Since then, the directive has been included into each member
state's legal framework. All businesses that use electronic communication for
marketing purposes are subject to the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC
Directive) Regulations 2003 in the UK.
"A number of new requirements on companies that collect, store and process
personal data from EU users, which impacts email marketers" were imposed
by the GDPR in 2018; these included the right of users to access information
held about them and the right to seek the deletion of all such
information.[Reference required]
United
States
Congress enacted the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 in direct reaction
to the increasing volume of complaints over spam emails.[Reference required]
Congress came to the conclusion that commercial emails should not mislead
recipients about their source or content, that recipients of such emails have
the right to refuse them, and that the US government was demonstrating a
greater interest in regulating commercial electronic mail on a national level.
The act allows for a US$16,000 fine for each instance of spamming a specific
recipient.
It does not, however, directly forbid spam emailing;
instead, it places restrictions on the use of "materially false or
misleading" headlines in deceptive marketing campaigns. Email marketers
also need to adhere to certain requirements about the format, content, and
labeling of their emails. Because of this, a lot of US-based business email
marketers use a service or specialized software to make sure they are in
compliance with the act. There are numerous outdated processes in place that
don't guarantee adherence to the statute. Services also usually require users
to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address,
offer a one-click unsubscribe feature, and forbid importing lists of purchased
addresses that may not have given valid permission in order to comply with the
act's regulation of commercial email.[Reference required]
A no-cost option to opt out, an expanded definition of
"sender," the inclusion of post office or private mail boxes as
"valid physical postal addresses," and a clarification of the term
"person" are among the new requirements added to the CAN-SPAM Act.
The effective date of these new clauses was July 7, 2008.