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You're using email marketing any time your business sends an email directly to a person. Usually that's in hopes of getting in front of your buyers and other people you're helping in order to filter for your future best buyers.
But, "What is email marketing?" is a question I've seen in many forms all around the Internet. That's why I'm writing today: I don't like the answers out there.
Maybe you don't either! You've probably been told to buy this or that - where this or that goes flying over your head.
To some extent it's because people are in selling mode instead of helping mode. To another extent it's a foreground and background issue.
Seriously! Seeing the forest for the trees and all that.
What do you focus on first?
Most people will say trees rather than birds, for example. Unless a bird just pooped on them.
Life is stranger than fiction so yes that's a real example in more than one way. A colleague stepped out for lunch and got totally enveloped in goop. She ran back in, totally freaked out, screaming and went home once she calmed down. A friend who rides his bicycle a lot shared stories of being target practice for pelicans amongst others. I digress.
Okay. One way to look at a forest is as a bunch of trees.
Sill, even from the tree looking point of view, it's way more than that. Exactly!
In the same way, poop included, email marketing is using Internet marketing. When you send email with permission, you are sending a message.
Send email without permission and you're a bird in that forest dumping poop. Some people will freak out. Others will wipe off their glasses, remove their hat, laugh and simply go onwards. Okay, the laughing probably comes much later but you get the drift, right?
Permission based email marketing
(1) Got it. Good! Email marketers are like a welcome tree in the forest. Expected and enjoyed.
(2) Not got it. Bad! Email marketers are using Internet marketing to be a big bird. But all they do is poop on people.
Where do you start?
Do you focus on one tree? Or do you need to see a couple of trees?
If you focus on one tree, do you stare only at the base of the tree and gaze upward? Or do you climb it?
As a kid I used to climb a tree and sit and read a book. Now I'm a lot more likely to sit at the base and lean back, enjoying the shade while reading.
Does that mean the one I do now is better than my earlier climbing a tree? No! Certainly not.
One not-so-hidden detail is that I'm older, creakier and don't have access to trees that are acceptable to climb as I did as a child. I mean, seeing a kid up in your tree is one thing but an adult? Police might get involved in arresting you because others have used trees to peep from. Or you might get booked into a mental institute instead since Adults Don't Climb Trees is part of our culture. Or end up on the television news if it's a slow news day.
What do you do to find out what a forest is for you?
(1) You go there and experience it for yourself. Perhaps you climb a tree or two.
(2) You buy into someone else's definitions by way of reading a book, looking at pictures, viewing videos or listening to poetry.
What do you do to find out what email marketing is for you?
You only get to really know it by being in it. Like the forest, you only get to know your own view point by being the one who is walking at your own speed, choosing what to look at one moment at a time. You may climb a tree and listen to the birds sing, sway back and forth in the breeze, and feel the sun on your shoulders. Then again, you may prefer to back up to look at ten, twenty and more trees to gain an understanding.
You get Internet marketing training that sinks in like visiting a forest with a guide who knows your goals.
What is email marketing?
That's what email marketing is. It's a tree in the forest.
Email marketing is what gets you the benefits of using Internet marketing. Email marketing is the tool that builds your community.
Email marketing is one of the keys to how you succeed online. 'Tis an answer to another question, too!
How do you build a community that respects, likes, trusts and buys from you?
I like the way you explain it...a good message for everyone. Thanks!
Great work again, very interesting reading and I loved the humor very simple and very effective in the way you have got your message across using non complex writing and messaging. gai
Thank you! Gayle I really am thrilled that you loved the humor. Glad you found it interesting and effective. I'm enjoying learning to add humor and stories to get the somewhat more techie sides to feel fun and easy to remember.
I love your sense of humor Cynthia, you can make a potentially 'dry' subject actually sound very funny. Great article!
Thank you Penny! That means a lot to me. I'm experimenting with humor - I usually keep it to myself. Glad you found it funny and I appreciate your compliments.
Thank you! I'm thrilled to get you to take action as a result of reading this article. That's what success online is born of - taking little tiny actions as you learn.
Another good and very useful article Cynthia. And many thanks also to Christopher. Thank you guys for the double lesson!
Thank you Maria! Indeed, Christopher included a priceless lesson, didn't he?!
Cynthia, didn't you ever nail this one?! Who else has ever taken email marketing and been able to evoke such a vivid picture that will be long remembered with the message intended. I also liked your comment about being in selling mode instead of helping mode. I would have liked to bring out that point better in my article on building rapport... it's not about being manipulative but rather helpful. That's where these bits of knowledge become the most valuable to us and others. Win/win!
Thank you! You're right, being helpful is our intent - but we see so many bad examples online. It's easy to feel sad, get lost or simply stuck in slowing down so you can overcome the tug inside of what others do is not representative of what you (we:-) do.
Lovely examples, Cynthia Ann! I've experienced Mail Marketing (from the old days of junk mail) and the environment for promotions has a unique history. At first, there were store signs and door-to-door salesmen, evolved from the tinkers and traders of earlier ages. The purveyors of bibles, magazine subscriptions, encyclopedias, and Fuller brushes received an excellent course in sociology through their door-to-door experiences of the whole panoply of human nature--and this made them experts at 'selling'. Much of this biz migrated to mass marketing when radio came along (print ads would also be worthwhile once the newspaper industry achieved a sort of respectability it never had during its early years) and then TV. But mass marketing is only cost effective when the potential prospects are a significant portion of the population. When direct mail marketing came along, it became possibly to 'target' ones message to a certain demographic (for example, sending snow-ski promotions to subscribers of Skiing Magazine). This was not AS effective as door-to-door, but the cost per sale dropped when using ‘junk mail’ addressed only to ‘proven prospects’. By the 1970s, almost all door-to-door promotions had vanished--and our mailboxes began to get stuffed with mail for 'occupant'. The same process migrated into telemarketing—when marketers bought the same mailing lists (with the same demographic targeting data) with a phone number added. Telemarketing beats Mail Marketing because it is a more intimate contact with the prospect. That same process is eroding almost all the direct-mail and telemarketing advertising and converting it to email (SPAM) marketing. List-owners offer demographic selections based on location, job title, sex, age, ethnicity, and buying history. This last, and most valuable criteria is being debated recently as an issue of privacy (and this was a concern for mail marketers and telemarketers in the pre-internet days). Their response—‘we only use the data to group together potential interested-prospects’ is quite true –advertisers has no motive to spy on customers—they want to be friends! But when the FBI bought up some mailing lists a decade or two ago, people realized that a third party could (and would) acquire these lists for other purposes. So the debate continues. Email marketing can be misleading—one person can use their own contact e-mail list to do a small self-promotion of a product or event—and it won’t cost a dime. But true email marketing on a nationwide scale is only possible in concert with an agency. One of the biggest, Direct Marketing Inc. (DMI), is based in Greenwich, CT. They can help with the copy, the list, the emailing, and the responses, sales or otherwise. They work on commission, so you have to average in their percentage when calculating any large-scale promotion. But they are a reliable source for permission-only email lists in an industry that is historically prone to small, fly-by-night con artists being mixed in with the serious marketer. A serious marketer knows that making and keeping a customer is all about being straight with them, not calling during suppertime, not sending fifty emails to one address for the same offer, etc., etc. Professional behavior is the only presence that will generate return business---and there’s only one thing cheaper than email marketing: customer orders from former satisfied customers. Thus endeth the lesson.
Bravo! Thanks Christopher. You know a lot! Appreciate your visit and your sharing your lesson;-)
Hi Cynthia, Excellent article. I have been out of the loop for 6 weeks, or so, as I've been busy launching a new online business. The timing of this article was perfect. Using e-mail marketing, when done right is quite beneficial. As you said, if done wrong, feels like poop. I look forward to being back in the loop and reading more articles.
Congratulations Becky! Significant milestone:-) I'm glad my writing helps you, both timing wise and content wise. Welcome back in the loop. I got out from troubles (tripped, reinjured knee, hurt shoulder, cracked head on tile; out literally:-) Trying to catch up here on Street Articles myself. Bit by bit...
Having been pooped on by birds a few times I understand. I loved the way you tied that in with unwanted email marketing
I'm working on learning humor and photos:-) Thank you John! Wanted to be vivid and remembered - and storytelling is effective.
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