Email Marketing: Strategic Planning   by Pankaj Jain

Now here is my question, what is e-mail marketing? What's the purpose of e-mail marketing? Who is the target?
According to what I understand, E-mail marketing is all about hitting the mail box of a internet user and telling him that here I am standing for you with this offer, click here and its all yours.

We try saying this in different ways, today we see many spam email hitting our mail boxes. I will try and list out a few concepts used now-a-days:
* E-mail with just a image that in turn links to their tracked webpage
* E-mail with promotional text and a images again linking to their tracked webpage
* E-mail with a gesture like "I found this, you also try, its good" kind of presentation with an affiliate tracking url attached to the link page.
* The best I liked was a simple email template with small 4 liner, to the point, conveying it all.

Maybe the idea of what type of e-mails do we sent has many factors to look into:
* Target audience
* Their behavior pattern
* Their age group
* Their buying power
* Is it B-to-B or B-to-C targeting

The template design inputs are more of influenced by these factors:
* The team leader's mind set
* The target audience age group
* The target audience profile

Some profiles like to the point reading, its like scanning the text, some get influenced by colors, some like to have offers associated with it, some like free stuff.
All in all everyone dances on the same lines "WTIFM". You would wonder now what do you mean by "WTIFM"?
Your current thoughts are very closely associated with the answer and that is "WHATS THERE IN FOR ME".

When an e-mail template hits this target of any age group, any profile, any audience, any behavior pattern, you get that click. Before pitching any e-mail, test it by mailing it to the ones you know and that fall into your target list profile criteria, take inputs, definitely you will come up with opinions you might have never thought of. Its better to sent mails to 10000 id's once every week after following the rights and getting 100 clicks through, than mailing 50000 every week and getting 50 clicks through. You save your bandwidth, you have less chances of termed a spammer and the resultant effect is more fruitful.

I shared my idea's, do mail me yours at pankajvjain at gmail dot com

Cheers
P Jain

Search Engine Optimization
SEO, working for Workforce Management Software

About the Author

Internet Marketing Student, SEO