Exploring Technology in Business
The use of technology in marketing, like a lighthouse, can help to guide traffic safely to your website. 

Are you using your technology most effectively?

Effective Marketing

Email marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of Internet advertising. This is because there are many distinct advantages to the concept of email marketing. However, email marketing does have some disadvantages as well. In this article we will examine the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing and will also provide some insight into how to plan and execute an effective email marketing campaign.

Email marketing certainly has a set of unique advantages over other types of marketing both online and offline. Perhaps one of the most significant advantages to email marketing is the ability to reach a worldwide audience with minimal effort. It is certainly possible to reach a worldwide audience with other types of advertising but traditional types of advertising such as television, radio and the print media are not nearly as effective for reaching potential customers around the world all at once.

Another major advantage to email marketing is it is extremely affordable. This is significant because there are many other types of marketing, including Internet marketing, which are significantly more expensive than email marketing. The costs associated with email marketing are minimal. Ideally you will already have a list of email recipients who are interested in your products and services so there is no cost associated with obtaining a list of email addresses. Additionally the cost to send out emails is minimal and can be considered part of your regular operating costs. All of these factors already make email marketing extremely cost effective.

Content marketing may be another way to offer your services and products to customers. There there is some cost involved in content marketing. Primarily this is the costs associated with writing the quality articles and creating any graphics which will accompany the content. This will require hiring a writer to write the copy for the advertisement and a designer to create and implements the graphics. The cost of these services will vary pretty widely but in general you will pay more for writers and designers with more experience. This is because these writers and designers are expected to be able to produce a higher quality of work than those with less experience could produce.

The most obvious disadvantage to this marketing is the possibility of having your email marketing viewed as spam. This is a very important problem because it could prove to be quite costly in terms of the profit margin for your business. Each day Internet users are bombarded with unsolicited emails and low quality articles serving as advertisements. This problem has reached epic proportions and the abundance of spam infiltrating the email boxes of Internet users has caused them to be cautious and suspicious about any email they receive which is unsolicited and appears to be promoting a particular product or service. Likewise they require that any article that they read offers more than just promotion but gives them actual value and is interesting and unique. Ensure that your emails and your content offers those things to the customer.

One other way to stay fresh in their mind is to use promotional merchandise. This is a physical gift that will bear your name or your logo, perhaps even your website URL and it can be very effective at marketing your goods and services.