Direct Email Campaigning in India

What is a direct email ?

A direct email is like a cold call. Here individual customers are solicited for their response via their email boxes about a product or service. While you can make 1 cold call at a time spending Rs.1, using email you can possibly reach 100 people for the same 1 Re.

But how does email compare to advertising on billboards, television, newspaper? Is it useful for Advertising, PR or market research or Direct sales? How and who will it bring in?

Email used to be called the medium of the future. It is not. It is today’s medium. Here is why :

• Newspapers have already reported lower sales volumes since people have started using the Internet as their main source for information. TV ad rates are only going up.
• Since the IT boom began in India about 8-9 years ago, the central and state governments implemented an active policy of computerizing the nation. This includes introducing computers and the Internet for school children from primary levels. This has ensured that the current and future generations are very computer and Internet savvy. One look at the city’s cybercafes will show that the school & college population occupies them mostly. The most used service on the Internet, worldwide is the email. 90% of the corporates and SME’s are already networked via the Internet.
• All these mean that very large populations of those who have buying power are reachable on the Internet. According to ClickZ advertising and Zdnet, email is the number 1 medium to reach key decision-makers.
  
  

  What advantage do emails have over TV or billboard promotion?

• Interactivity. An ad on a TV or a billboard is a one way message. A prospective customer reading it cannot ask back the billboard questions. This strongly reduces the chances of sales. However email and online features such as chat, SMS etc greatly increase the chance of instant sales. The customer can now read a promotional mail and immediately go to a website and get his queries answered which quickens the chances of making a sale.
  Besides different emails can be sent to different target groups whereas one can erect only 4-5 expensive billboards or one television ad at a time.
• Email marketing can be used for PR, direct sales, advertising or market research. However each of these have different elements of Internet and marketing associate with them. Madrasmarkets has done each of these types of marketing.
  
  Steps in an Email Marketing Campaign :

• Create email database
• Create opt-in lists - opt in lists are email address lists of people who have expressed interest in the producst and services you offer
• Check for bounce and dead email ids - often people create email id's but do not use them. Consequently the email service provider deletes these 'dead id's'. However thrid party email lists include such dead id's. A email list which includes these id's too is bound to have a bad bounce back rate.
• Verify spam server IP’s - often emails are rejected from even valid servers if they use an open relay method. Many ISP's in India use open relay SMTP service meanig you neednt have an account with them to send a mail via their servers. This vulnerability is exploited by spammers and the ISP gets classifed as a spam server by other global servers. Likewise if your SMTP server has been classifed as a spam server there are very little chances of your email getting through to potential customers.
• Add cyberlaw compliance
• Copywrite email message
• Send emails
• Check for bounce back
• Collect response to email replies
• Sell & make profit!
  
  P.S : Madrasmarkets has tied up with leading ISP's to offer legal email marketing.
  
  Internet Marketing – a research data sheet
• 8 billion $ global online sales
• Internet is the largest inter-connected medium– currently 95% of the Indian industry is connected in way or the other to the Internet.
• While B2C segment collapsed in the dot-com bust, B2B segment has grown highest.
• School & college segment & the corporate office goers are on the net while not many home users are found. In 5 years time, most of the decision-makers will be on the net.
• Use email for branding - Getting an Email about a product creates an upbeat image about a brand. With good customer service this can be successfully turned into sales at 10% the cost of TV advertising
• Use Internet to complement each other in a cross-media campaign
• Internet is an interactive medium. Unlike TV or outside hoarding, which one cannot be interactive, the Internet can be used to get immediate responses.
  

  
  How can you use emails for marketing?

• Extending reach. Many argue that because some people don't have access to the Internet, it's not an effective tool for mass-reach campaigns. Not everyone watches TV, either. Getting close to maximum reach on TV can cost a fortune. Some audiences, particularly the most affluent (and time-starved) consumers, may be more reachable online. A recent study on the at-work audience drives this point home.
• Maximizing effectiveness. Much has been made of "360-degree marketing" and like concepts advocating reaching your target through multiple touch points. Hackneyed, as the concepts may be, it's perfectly logical that exposing people to your message through multiple media can increase the likelihood they will receive, retain, and believe your message. Marketers who are serious about branding should find a way to put the Web into the mix.
• Using interactivity. In many ways, online advertising is closer to print advertising than to TV. Though neither print nor online has proven to be as powerful as TV in evoking an emotional response, both can present information in a compelling way. The Web's major advantage over print is offering consumers the ability to choose what information they need, then deliver that information as part of an experience that can be more stimulating than a static ad. Not everyone will want to interact with an advertiser's message. It's probably worth offering the opportunity to those who do.
• Leveraging online relationships. Whether it's a mini-site about relationships on iVillage or a fantasy football game on ESPN, people become very involved in online content. Communities and content online are prime places for advertisers to deliver targeted messages that link to experiences people value. Tying a message to a concept or experience through an online sponsorship can be a highly effective way to build key attributes of a brand -- even if online ads don't quite have the power to make someone shed a tear.
  
  We still have a lot to learn about the best uses of the Web. As the Web evolves, its power to create compelling experiences will grow. Marketers who learn how to use the Web as a media tool will have significant competitive advantage over those who ignore the medium's possibilities.
  
  Madrasmarkets helps you use emails effectively in the marketing life-cycle. Contact us at marketing@madrasmarkets.com for more details.
  For in-depth discussions on marketing issues send an email to : indianonlinemarketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, SearchEngineMarketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, searchengineoptimisation-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.