Email & Mobile Marketing

Friday evening would be an experience for a digital consultant was not my expectation when I attended 3^rd email marketing round table in Bangalore on 19^th Aug,2011.

netCORE and IAMAI Partnered to come up with series of Email marketing Round table to bring in new thoughts and live cases of companies using email marketing as their marketing weapon. I really liked the content covered and new ideas shared.

3 Most important points I learnt this Friday were:

1- We see the world the way we are not the way it should be:

One of the Panel members of the Round table discussed his experience of his child receiving promotional email and feeling privileged about it, rather than getting irritated. Feeling young at heart will make you young rather than age said by another Panelist to the question of only youth being present on Social Media.

Multi–channel strategy which Indian companies are adopting specially e-commerce portals was another key thoughts of the eve. How subscribers are being updates about offers on email + sms to make it effective and increase ROIs to certain percentage. It was obvious to see the mature marketers talking about complementing ideas with each platform.

It was interesting to see various new perceptions with live scenarios making a difference in the space where everyone has no fact and data as Indian email marketing is still at nascent stage.

2-Did Indian email marketing really grow from batch & blast to Opt-in

Lot of ESPs and grown up marketer says that Indian email marketing industry has gone mature from Batch & Blast to Opt-in and moving slowly towards Profiled and segmented email targeting. Again a new perception came into picture when the Panel discussion said that we still do Batch & Blast its just that we have divided the batches into small segments and will call it refine batch & Blast rather than Opt-in or Profiled targeting. Till the time the ROIs are growing with such adjustments evolution of hygienic email marketing will be questionable.

3- Points we should Brain storm at?

One point which round table didn’t speak much about was how to Increase the Opt-in subscribers?

What is the future of Email marketing Industry in India?

How can we understand our subscriber more effectively and send content which they like?

Well I’m sure we have lot to talk and discuss so why don’t you write us back and let us know what are your thoughts on the above questions.

This is a debatable topic. The answer to this question is definitely “NO”. But yes as an Email Marketer steps can be taken to reduce Spam.

If you get an email from someone you don’t know, is that spam? Not necessarily. So what’s spam? Spam is when you send an unsolicited email to a whole list of people. Let’s say you just bought a list of email addresses from some local business organization. These are great prospects for your business, right? You want to send them an email with a relevant offer they can’t refuse. It’s spam if you upload that list and send that list an unsolicited email because these users have not registered with you to recevie emails.

Email should be sent to only those users who have opted to receive mails from you. For this either you should have a widget/registration page in website, where a user can provide details. But a confirmation mail shoudl be sent to these users to authenticate the email id. Alternately there are many other methods of collecting authenticated email id like workshop, seminars, socail networks and other, but that’s a totally different topic. So not getting much into data collection details, here the point to focus is why are mails being treated as Spam.

Some of the reasons why mails are treated as Spam:

• Domain is blacklisted.
• IP is blacklisted.
• Sometime its the problem with email content, sender id.

These are the baisc stuff which every email marketer is aware of. But what steps can be taken to avoid a mail being treated as Spam:

• Always use opt-in/double opt-in database.
• Keep the content relative to the user.
• Always give an option to opt-out from email.
• Don’t send heavy emails, try hosting some content in it.
• Check the domain and IP reputation.

Spam is the reason why the mailbox is flooded with emails. Although there are Anti-Spam bodies in many countries, but in India there is no such regulatory body.

Although Spamming can’t be stopped but it can be reduced!!

In case there is a possibility of Biggest Fight in the world, Email and Mobile will be 2 names whose egos have been tried, tested and executed against each other so many times by Marketers.

There is not much to share about their fights but will share one piece of their personal conversation.

“Email to mobile: what the F man I heard your market is going down since my existence has gain more prominence.

Mobile to email: With limited people on internet your presence has never been felt in my comparison where half of the world is using me you spacious pig!”

There is more to it but I’m sure you don’t want to get into too much Drama.

Combination of different channels empowers your communication

Smart Marketers realized that instead of using both the platforms individually what if it is combined and made it a multi-channel cross benefit strategy. The idea was worth the check as both the platforms have unique strengths.

Does your marketing tool has everything in it?

Email gives the highest conversion (42$ for every 1$ spent) and Mobile e-commerce market is growing and it is estimated that by 2015 it will be 8% of the total e-commerce market.

Thus, the time has come when marketers shift to multi-channel marketing strategy by combining strength of one tool with another. Email+SMS is one such combination,

So here is how you can use both platforms effectively:

People can easily and quickly register for your company’s email alerts

1.) A mobile shortcode system where people can register  themselves by sending sms on a shortcode & subscribe for company’s info  eg:  ABC NEWSLETTER @ 575758

2.)    Now ABC would ask for your email id and confirm your registration, this way you don’t have to go on their website to subscribe for info and can get it easily through mobile registration process

Email marketing is used for generating leads today and Mobile comes handy and have a better engagement features. This is one of the deadly combination when comes to marketing tools. With growing choices in the market, marketers will have to take a call on combining different tools to cook one good marketing & communication strategy.

What type of mails do you send? Is it promotional, informational or transactional? Be it any of them, what I am here focusing on is the email style. Does your mailer is a single image or its pure text?

Today most of the people access their emails through smart phones and this is where an email marketer has to get alert. In smart phones emails cannot be viewed properly if it’s a single image. It will increase the mailer size and also would take time to be downloaded. This can be overcome by:

• Keep it a combination of text and image. Because even if the subscriber is not able to view to the mailer properly then they can go through the text part and get an overview of the mailer and decide whether it is to be saved for further reference or not.
• Host some part of the mailer to keep the mailer size small and get better response.

This also points out that the mailer content should be informative and describe the purpose effectively.

Today most of the ESP’s also offer mobile view option, where the email can be viewed as per the mobile settings. This is an example where technology improves with time.

If you are having a smart phone so check out what works and what not and see this from a subscriber’s perspective and implement it as a marketer.

So check your mails and find out!

Email marketing as a field is diverse and has lots of variants which have to be taken care of be a good Email Marketer.

One of the important aspects is to keep updating your database regularly since:

• It helps you to maintain/improve your domain reputation on the web world.

• Also, helps save cost you incur, since their normally seem to be quite a few ID’s which are inactive from a long time but still mails happen to be sent.
  
  Now the question is how do we keep our database updated?

Firstly keep a regular track on your Hard Bounces and Unsubscribe’s and keep them away from your regular mailing list.

Secondly, one practice which should be followed for all your email campaigns is that there should be a link provided at the top of your creative saying “Update your preferences” which gives the end user a convenient option to update his new details. Since quite a few people keep changing their ID’s on a regular basis.

But, it becomes a two step process for the end user to update his new details.

Now how can we simplify this process??

Can we include a form in the content….??

I am sure all of us have heard of the fact that the form doesn’t work when included in the content  Well it’s not true anymore….

Now Email marketing also gives us an option to include forms in the content in the “Get method” (data is collected from a URL) rather than the “Post inside method“(data is collected through a script which doesn’t work most of the Email Service Providers) and they would work properly in Yahoo and Gmail which are the two of the majorly used domains.

So, we can carry out a direct “Update your preferences” campaign where they can update or modify the details in the content itself rather than doing the changes after being directed to a page.

Now feel free to include forms in the content (don’t forget, in the “Get” method) and keep updating your database regularly.

Has Email Marketing become a medium used by people just to cut down on their marketing cost??

If that is the case then, I really pity such people who are opting for Email marketing to reduce cost; we can term such people to be unfortunate but lucky.

The reason for me to pen this down was because I overheard a sales pitch to the client which was as follows:

Sales Guy: Hello Sir, good morning sir, how are you?
Client: I am great, what about you?
Sales Guy: I am good sir. Sir so talking about your marketing activities, as mentioned over the call you said you are facing budget issues. This is exactly where Email marketing will help you Sir. It is “cheap”(this was the word used) and help you majorly save your costs.
Client: Is it??  But my message should be communicated to the audience.
Sales Guy: Sure sir, that obviously would be done and that too at a minimal cost, as low as 5% of the costs you would incur from other mediums.
Client: Sure, then let’s go ahead with it I will get the PO ready.
Sales Guy: I will get all the things ready at my end sir. It was great meeting you.
Client: Same here. Good day.

The sales guy put it across to the client as “Cheap” and the client got convinced immediately, no doubt I agree to the fact that Email marketing as a medium is cost effective but it isn’t the only value add which it provides to an organization.

Facts Uncovered about Email Marketing:

• Sending a personalized message which helps your Brand build a direct relation with the customer.
• One of the biggest plus point is that the ROI can be tracked and your can also carry out analysis on your customer behavior.
• Helps to connect with Social Media, which is helpful since it being a current trend in the market.

Thus, it Is important for us to look at Email marketing as a medium to more effectively communicate and touch base with our end user, rather than just looking at it as a tool which would help in cost cutting for an organization.

So friends, next time you come across such a sales pitch, make it a point to correct it immediately……

Email Marketing is moving in fast these days. Emails are now considered as a black & white document for many forms of business – Egs are Credit Card Statements, Online Bills, Contract Notes etc. With the government now giving air to the “Go Green” Revolution, company’s have to start sending the Annual Reports and even the Contracts via email. More this revolution of Go Green gains momentum, Importance of emails will grow and we would see that the email will take the face of a signed hand written document.

Emails have already picked up speed in India. See for your regular Facebook notifications, if someone will mentioned your name in a comment or any page, you will receive an email notification and believe it or not, we do want such notifications in our mailbox just to show people – “Yes! I do receive emails daily.” Same checks out for Twitter (which is already becoming one of the most powerful tools of promotion), you get alert via email for name in tweets or for your re-tweets.

So, when people are now inquisitive to read emails, happiness among email marketers is there. But with this happiness comes a very important message – Frequency of change in the content of emails has to increase. No wonder the number of unread emails would increase, email marketers will now have to make their communications more innovative and ways to engage users have to be changed to a higher level.

The point to note here is even though you have been sending solicited content to your users, the users will not respond to your emails and the Open Rates and click through rates will come down. There is no rocket science behind the reason – its just users have got bored with the same content and email format and they need something new. New – I know is always a mystery for the Content Manager and the Marketing Team but this has to be the crux of your successful email campaigns.

We have seen many types of emails reaching our inbox – promotional offers from e-commerce and online portals, Merchandise offers with watch, wallet or a pen, sports gear accompanied by accessory, online movie tickets with combos and what not. What if users have got bugged off from all these emails. There are two things to this fact – either the offers have to become more tempting such that users feel compelled to buy online or the creatives and design of the mailer makes them open the emails regularly. You cannot have your business run only on offers as providing offers compromises your net year revenue, so the content and mailer design has be made better.

Three important points that email marketers have to always keep in mind:

1. Content holds the most important key to Customer Engagement. If you have to take the end user time and money, then first give the user some interesting or entertaining content which would compel them to get in regular communication with you and finally become your customer
2. Giving only offers will make users always OFFER-Centric and they will see you only if you have offer. You don’t give them 2 good deals in a row and you will loose the customer.
3. User Engagement has always been the game changer for email marketers and will always be.

Designing the email campaign is the most difficult task, but if the campaign is not executed correctly then what’s the use of putting such efforts. Before executing any email campaign test mailer should always be done. There are some points, which need to be considered, like:

• Check whether the mail is landing to inbox or not.
• Is the mailer having proper indexing?
• Does it serve the purpose for which it will be executed?
• If the mailer is having a form in it, then is that form working in all domains?

Checking some of these points would help achieve better response to the campaigns. If it’s a promotional mail and any social networking link is also there, then check for the content that would be posted on these websites, as this would impact your viral marketing. Check the mailer preview for different domains and also for different browser. Also smartphones shouldn’t be ignored in this case.

Testing is a long process but its effectiveness can’t be ignored. So test before the executing any email campaign!

Human mind is basically judgmental. Each & every incidents, people, places, food are automatically assessed by human mind. Our mind will have an answer for each & every evaluations: like or dislike, yes or no etc. Likewise each & every individual has predetermined judgment about the hundreds of emails racing to his or her inbox per day. Each individual has an expectation that ”this will be this” or “that will be that”. So the Success of an email marketer is to break this expectations or evaluations and make that person go through our mail.

HOW???… Big Question… But Simple Answerssss…

The first thing that should be kept in mind is make  the subject line simple & attractive… a very interesting example can be: while doing the promotions for Father’s day the common subject lines seen were “Go ahead. Make your Father’s day”, “Make it a Super Father’s Day” etc.. these type of subject line is evaluated by customers as a normal promotional campaign, which have more probability of being not viewed. So try something different, “Give your Father a Loving Surprise”, “love your father- Gift him a   fantastic Father’s day” can be some substitutes which will make customers curious to know, What is there in this Mail?…

The Second point that should be kept in mind is sender name, A positive impact should be created in the customers mind, when they see our Brand Name. A feeling that this mail will be useful or informative for me, should be created in customers mind through the standards of mails that are used for the campaigns. So that brand name will make the customer read that mail. Keeping info@, marketing@ etc.. will create an impact of promotions which may increase the probability of being not viewed, so the best way can be use your brands simple mail I.d which will be simple and create a impact which will create results. Like Dominos pizza & Aditya Birla which are brand images tempting customers to know more about the mail.

The Third but most important point is the content, just imagine if we are busy with our works, what will be the maximum time that will be  allotted for viewing per mails: 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 1 minute. Will we prefer a large text document mail in this speculated time, the majority of the answers will be, No. So always keep in mind that the mails have to be short & cute which covey the content. Even it is newsletters or Educational content try to convey the message in a simple template which will include the usp’s of that peculiar product/ service and a call to action on the same, so that interested customers can visit the respective websites and get the details.

So no more speech, One can lead the market of email marketing through Regular workouts(market Research)& Healthy Diets(efficient mails) which will provide a great look and a bigger range of Fans(customers).Thus leading to greater profitability to our Business.

If you don’t have an email account, then what do you do? Just go and register with any of the ISP’s. Or if you want to receive newsletters from a particular website then you register for receiving newsletters. But while providing the personal details how many of you go through the terms and conditions which is written there. I suppose none. We just check the “I accept the above mentioned terms and conditions”. Then after getting registered we receive many promotional emails. Even you might have not registered to receive that promotion then why are you receiving it?

Here if you check the terms for which you have agreed while registering either for getting an email account or receiving newsletters, there is a point mentioned that you also agree to receive promotional offers from this vendor. Only few give options to opt-out for not receiving other promotional offers apart from which you have registered.

This is also one of the reasons why spam is increasing, as even though don’t want to receive an email still they are receiving it and lead the user to mark it as SPAM. Thus, resulting is bringing down the reputation of the vendor. So what’s the solution for this? Give your subscribers an option to opt-out of a particular promotion. Always include an unsubscribe link in your email. Don’t make subscribers to mark you as SPAM, just give a chance to opt-out also.

So even you have not opted intentionally to receive other promotions but still you are a subscribed user to it. So check before you opt!!!!

E-mail - It’s painfully excruciating when you are meant to go some where and are thrown some place else.

Some one help! I’m in so much pain. Why why why?…. What have I done to make it hurt so much?!

E-mail Specialist- Don’t worry, my dear friend. I will help you get rid off your pain and also tell you symptoms of it so you can take the necessary precautions next time.

E-mail- (Tears Pouring) Ahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Please, what can i do to stop this pain?!

E-mail Specialist- Do you need a handkerchief?

E-mail- (More loudly this time) Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

E-mail Specialist- Ok, tell me how it started?

E-mail - Can I please have some water first..

Thanks…

Ok, so, I started my journey from a compose room where I was created. I must tell you I wasn’t created very well. Like human beings, E-mails too, are cautious of their appearance.

E-mail Specialist- Hahaha

Email- Wasn’t a joke.

E-mail Specialist- Sorry ..So what happened next dear..

Email- Well, if you must know.. After creating me he titled me 50% off.  I hate that name, how would ISPs like it. I was thrown towards some steel giants and traveled through different Borders(filters)..I was shot at one and landed up in spam. Why me!

E-mail Specialist- Listen friend..

I will tell you what actually happened and why you landed up in the Spam.

• Your title “50% off” is really unsuitable for E-mail marketing.
• Your  Creator www.xyz.com is back listed and not meant to be used as a domain to send emails.
• You had a single image (not recommended!).
• Rapport of your IPs were not good.
• Your image name was nikhil_emptyrrect1.png too lengthy, not recommended. Logo.jpg will work better.
• The links attached in the mail carry blacklisted domains in them.

ISPs recognized that your Creator wasn’t logical enough to imbibe the right ingredients in you and send you in the ecofriendly world (Inbox), thus you landed up in Spam.

E-mail- Thanks you Mr. Specialist but who can cure me now. I want to see the Inbox life, to be opened and read and loved by readers.

E-mail Specialist- I advise you to go and contact some E-mail Marketing Professionals. You will find a cure and a new life in their hospitality as they are well known for it.  Don’t worry! You will surely land up in an Inbox. You will fulfill the purpose for which you were created.

Winston Churchill once said : “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire”

Petty fights  in families for proving superiority is common  whether its Ekta kapoors daily soaps, Prakash Jha’s RAAJNEETI, or Ambani brothers.

Here are the 3 generations from the family of Wireless Cellphone Technology, boasting and making fun of each other.

1G says- I was the one who introduced the concept of cellular. I made large scale mobile wireless communication possible. I am the Mangal Pandey of mobile revolution.

2Gsays- My dear 1G  You are A modest little person, with much to be modest about. I was the one who replaced the analogy technology to Digital Communication and improved the quality of wireless communication.

3G says- more modestly, well! Families are like fudge . . . mostly sweet, with a few nuts like these two. I am the new face of India and the latest revolution. I bring the converged network for voice and data communication.

Some basic brilliance below:

What are these generations?

Well these generations are evolutions in Mobile wireless technologies raising the standards with each generation climbing.

1G- 1G signifies first-generation wireless analog technology standards that originated in the 1980s. Here Mobile systems were designed to offer a single service.

2G-

2G signifies second-generation wireless digital technology launched in early 1990s. Here Mobile system were designed primarily to offer speech with a limited capability to offer data at low rates.

3G- Every one of us is aware of 3G buzz. 16,828 crore bidding was another attraction in the headline few days back.

World wide known as International Mobile telecommunications 2000 (IMT2000) 3G technologies enabled faster data-transmission speeds, greater network capacity and more advanced network services. Now Mobile TV, Video conferrencing, Video on demand, Location based services will be possible.

The first pre-commercial 3G network launched in May 2001 by NTT DoCoMo in Japan. In india it is launched in 2010  for 22 circles.

Spam complaints in E-mail Markeitng are like a Hunter living in a Lion’s Den. Always scared of becoming a relish apetite of its roomate.

On a serious note once you loose rapport as a E-mail Marketer in the eyes of ISPs  you will have to face sharp swords on your head to deliver even your good emails in the Inbox. The other day I came across this interesting article of how you can reduce this Malaria of Spam upto 75%, an article by StreamSend and a vital advice to E-mail Marketing:

How to Reduce Spam complaints by 75%

We have found that customers who place the unsubscribe link at the top of the email and make it very prominent and easy to see, often reduce their spam complaints by 75%. This reduction in complaints can easily make the difference between getting blocked and not getting blocked by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

There is consensus among email marketing experts that it is time to move the unsubscribe link from the bottom to the top of all email marketing emails The reason is simply that most ISPs have made it very easy to click the “report spam” button, which can really damage your deliverability, as opposed to the unsubscribe link which cleanly unsubscribes someone from your list without hurting your deliverability.

The first mention I have seen of this idea was a blog post on in April of 2008 by Mark Browlow called, Time to Move The Unsubscribe Link? Since then I have seen this idea brought up in a number of influential email marketing blogs and publications and so the answer to Mark’s question is yes it is definitely time to move the unsubscribe link to the top of all email marketing emails.

Lets talk on Mobile as a Powerful Medium but before I can slide on, I want to take you all on a mind-boggling ride of few unheard facts. Our Planets Population is approx 685 crore. Indias is second in the list after China. This is one sphere where India is not at the Top & your are still pleased.

Do you know which brand is the most Pervasive brand ever on this Planet ?

Coca-Cola- No, Microsoft- No, Sony- No, Toyota- No..The Answer is NOKIA. It has sold mobiles to approx 27% of Our planets human species. No other brand has made quarter of world’s population, their client. Coke didn’t serve, Microsoft OS never reached, Sony  walkman or playstation or for that case Toyota never covered Lions share of our planet. By far far far, by very long shot Nokia is most pervasive brand ever.

A media planner today selects to spend on TV, Radio, Outdoors, Print, Digital mediums. His cream percentage goes to TV, Print & Radio. Out of the left out option Mobile gets the beggar’s privilege. Mobile as a Medium has competency of text(Print), Voice(Radio), videos(TV), WAP (internet), Apps(Digital). Its one stop shop, Omnipotent medium with quality of being Omnipresent. A medium which can reach to 27% of world’s population if I just take Nokia brand mobile phones you can imagine how many other players are their. After 3G entering Indian markets video ads and conferrencing will be the popular space.

I will leave you with a thought, 
“Its not far when mobile will replace Television with its video quality & other features in place! & will become an amazing medium to reach your TG.”

The most interesting recent articles I came across, penned by Mr. Amit Agarwal.

Texting on your mobile phone while driving is considered risky but the same activity when performed while walking on the street in not that safe either.

There have been numerous reports in the media of pedestrians walking into traffic, tripping on steps or even running into other people just because they were busy writing a text message or replying to an email on their cell phone when the accident happened.

When you can’t stop texting while walking

Since it’s hard to convince people to change their texting habits, some developers have come up with creative mobile apps that can make texting while walking a little more safer.

These apps basically turn your phone into a transparent glass so you can see what’s happening on the other side even while you are staring at the phone screen.

How? Well, they switch on your phone’s camera and add the email /texting functions on top of the live camera feed so you can type as before and still not run into anyone on the street. The following image & video  should give you a better idea:

The iTunes App store lists quite a few such apps for your iPhone including Type n Walk, iType2go (they have a free version as well), Email n Walk and Text Vision. The latter even offers an option to publish tweets while walking.

Android users have Road SMS but unfortunately, this app is currently only available for Samsung Galaxy S phones. If your phone is running the Bada OS, your choices are Walk n Write and Type n Walk.

I have been hunting for similar apps for other platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry but no luck so for – if you know of one, please do share in the comments.

Email Marketing is growing leaps and bounds  today. No one in the industry is unfamiliar with word email id, still the problem of email marketers is email id. It makes sense to make mistakes when you do not know the problem but looks awful when you know the problem and still you are repeating your mistakes.

Generally people are reluctant to changes and will initiate it when it becomes history or tradition. Coming back from my wild emotions the truth is people know that for doing biological email marketing campaigns they need organic database. If the problem is building organic database why people didn’t find out ways to get over it. Experts are still debating while some thoughts already have matured on it.

Below are the few ways where you can build organic email database or enhance your business horizons:

1. Widget on each page of your website: Every page should give an opportunity to collect email data
2. Referral link on the email: Every email campaign should have opportunity to forward the email to a friend
3. Affiliate email Marketing: Variety of registered data from different publishers, for sending affiliate emails

We will discuss more on this in the future posts.

Email Marketing in India has unleashed tremendous opportunities and shown power of being THE ONE medium that is gaining extensive growth in the recent times. With its exciting potential and ever rising importance, netCORE in association with IAMAI brings you India’s 1st Email Marketing Round Table on 7th January, 2011.

Hear experiences of elite leaders from different walks of businesses and verticals and how they made Email Marketing, a powerful marketing strategy for their success….!

You can’t miss it….

• Held on 7^th Jan, 2010, the event had an attendance of 150 marketers
• Panel agrees that social and email marketing are complimentary to each other
• Email marketing moving from batch and blast to more profiled and targeted methods

New Delhi, 8 Jan, 2010: netCore Solutions, Pioneers of Digital Marketing Solutions in association with IAMAI held the 1^st Email marketing Round Table in India at the India Habitat Center in Delhi on Friday, 7^th January 2011. The event was attended by CMOs, Marketing Heads of enterprises and media houses from around the country.

The eclectic discussion had over 150 participants glued while the panel of new age companies and digital marketers including Sandeep Lakhina, Chief Operating Officer – South Asia at Starcom Worldwide, Starcomm, Salil Kumar, CEO, Bag it Today, Amitabh Saran, CEO, Buzz in Town & Hitesh Oberoi, CEO, Naukri.com and the moderator Abhijit Saxena from netCore Solutions, brought insights on the success and power of email as a communication and marketing tool.

“Marketers in India are still between Batch and Blast to Opt-in email marketing. However, we are seeing movement towards email marketing based on the profile and need of the consumer, thus email marketing 2.0 will play a significant role in addressing Indian markets,” said Kalpit Jain, Business Head, Enterprise Group, netCore Solutions.

Email marketing is replacing direct marketing of yesteryears opined Sandeep Lakhina. He said,”Digital marketing budgets in India are at about 10% and email marketing gets a small part of that. Traditional methods have dominated the digital medium, but growing internet penetration holds a huge opportunity.’

Hitesh Oberoi, CEO, Naukri.com, India’s no.1 Job site shared interesting instances of using email marketing. He said, “Tools like email job alerts multiplied our traffic way early as 2001-2002. The volumes today have moved up to 30-40 million job alerts a week. Infact, we are moving towards behavioral targeting to increase the efficacy of mailing.” He also shared that in today’s situation early stage companies should be careful in utilizing the tool.

Email completes the circle of marketing. To this effect, Amitabh Saran, CEO, BuzzinTown.com said, “We have been using email marketing effectively for user acquisition, communication with the user in the form of newsletter, deals etc. Another aspect that has worked to our favour is that we believe in data mining and directing appropriate deals and ads to the end consumer.”

Salil Kumar shared that email marketing can help in growing business by 30% with the same database. He emphasized that, “Email as a marketing tool should be used tactfully. Marketers should create a platinum database of high-response customers. White-listing is important to make sure that your content lands at the right place and the right time.”

To sum up the discussion, Abhijit Saxena, CEO, netCore Solutions said, “Email marketing is a highly potent tool in the hands of a skilled marketer. It is much more than product and technology. It is actually about building an eco-system where marketers identify a class of curious buyers, qualify them as prospects, engage with prospects with an appropriate pitch to convert prospects to customers and all this by just a simple email.

All of this sounds simple, but the fact is that majority in India have not been able to do it successfully and ends up qualifying themselves as spammers.

With these series of events, and having service 300+ clients last year, netCore is now taking a lead in helping marketers build a rock solid infrastructure of email marketing by sharing the technical as well as business challenges with respect to email marketing.”

The panel was on a consensus that email marketing and social media marketing are complementary. The panelists insisted that integration of the two platforms is an important factor in accelerating growth of marketing and communications.

Almost 87% of India’s 94 million Internet population usually logs on to the Internet to check their emails. The simplicity and the effectiveness of an email compounded by a huge user base is something that marketers would find hard to ignore which is further supported by a report published by MarketSherpa that mentions email marketing budgets increased by 51% in the BFSI sector, followed by Education/Healthcare (47%), Manufacturing / Consumer goods (41%) and Retail / eCommerce (39%) in 2010.

The three areas marketers will be aiming to address in the year 2011, as per Customer Survey (CS) held by netCore showed that they would be focusing on delivering more through email marketing and have expressed improvement in delivering of highly relevant emails (71%), ROI measurement on campaigns (62%), increase the opt-in subscriber base (59%). The Campaign Analytics team at netCore also reiterates a similar split on the 2 billion emails which were routed through their Emergic Mass Mail (EMM) solution, with BFSI sector contributing the most. Email campaigns were used for promotional and informational purposes, with 36% mailers sent for announcing deals and offers, 31% for affiliate marketing, 18% to communicate transactional information and 15% as newsletters across all sectors.

DMA (Direct Marketing Association) also states the email typically generates 21.6% of total revenue from campaigns.

Indian companies have been catering global customers and hence the potential and the size of email marketing has increased exponentially in the last decade. The worldwide email users were projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. The worldwide email traffic which was 247 billion messages per day would almost double by 2013 and would roughly account to 507 billion emails per day.

netCore will continue to do similar events, sharing their experience of servicing 300+ customers last year and ensuring organization keep benefiting from the email marketing initiative. Mumbai will the next destination for series, with an event being planned in April 2011.

About netCore Solutions:

netCore Solutions Pvt. Ltd, pioneers in digital marketing solutions, was founded in the year 1998. The company focuses on affordable digital communication solutions for emerging economies.

netCore Solutions helps enterprises manage their email infrastructure, anti-spam, broadcast transactional and promotional emails in bulk. netCore offers consumer and enterprise mobility solutions for entire customer lifecycle using interactive text, picture, voice SMS and WAP Push. netCore services various sectors including BFSI, Retail, Media and Hospitality. In the consumer category, netCore owns SMS Superstore – My Today, and internet portals OneIndia.in, India’s leading vernacular news portal, and Click.in, India’s leading classifieds portal. netCore has 1,500+ enterprise customers, and also reaches 4 million subscribers through its My Today SMS service.

1. Economic Times
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/e-mail-marketing-set-to-log-in-growth-of-over-100-every-year/articleshow/7584935.cms

2. Jagran

http://post.jagran.com/email-market-to-grow-over-100-per-cent-1298823009

3. PTI

http://www.ptinews.com/news/1387260_E-mail-marketing-set-to-log-in-growth-of-over-100--every-year-

4. Oneindia

http://news.oneindia.in/wire/2011/02/27/email-marketing-set-to-log-in-growth-of-over-100-everyyea-aid0126.html

5. Financial Hub

http://financialhub.powweb.com/tag/e-mail-marketing

6. Indiatimes

http://oneclick.indiatimes.com/quote/05tS24KfWXdOS

7. Miracleworx

http://blog.miracleworx.com/2011/02/india%E2%80%99s-2nd-email-marketing-roundtable-by-netcore-and-iamai/

8. PRLog

http://www.prlog.org/11336265-20-crore-mails-each-month-netcore-grows-300-from-2010.html

9. Twenty Red

http://www.twenty6redmedia.com/2011/02/27/indias-2nd-email-marketing-roundtable-by-netcore-and-iamai/

10. Avaysha

http://www.avashya.com/cluster/156905/

11. Deccan Herald

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/141575/email-marketing-grow-100.html

Every relation today depends on  the terms of Give and Take but it will never work if you do it vice versa ie is Take and then Give which is questionable? Today’s email marketer should think like the Godfather, Vito Corleone who makes you an offer you cannot refuse:

Email Marketers act oxymoron these days they are like a funny famous quote

When I said ‘death’ before ‘dishonor’, I meant alphabetically.

They promise users to send them offers related to them but have they ever tried to know their reader need, what do they want, how much do they want and when do they want it?

You cannot feed a hungry man when he is already cold. Emails sent when needed gets best

engagement and respect.

5 Tips to build strong relationship with your audience:

1. Once reader registers for your emails, ask his age and profession- now you know whether he is a student or a professional and open to youth attraction or not
2. How many emails has he opened from you in past one month- This will show his interest towards checking emails and your emails specifically
3. Content of the email should be friendly and must be of value to reader and should be better everytime
4. He should get to engage and call for his friend so that he can share the good content or value offered to his near and dear ones
5. Feedback mechanism to update readers preferrences, choice and behaviour pattern

As the title suggests, today we are going to publish our views and opinions that tend to challenge the conventional; i.e. the myth of hesitation or not sharing one’s digital identity (email addresses, mobile numbers, etc) at various points of sale.

Most of you must be wondering why we are suggesting something that is been frequently avoided by people. After all no-one wants to be get bombarded with unsolicited emails and phone calls only because they provided their contact details at a feedback form in some restaurant, or a theater, or mall etc. But during all of this, what we generally don’t consider is that by not providing our contact details, we might miss out on getting certain alerts or information that could be of fatal importance.

And hence, based on some real-life incidents, we are attempting to emphasize that sharing your contact information at such places is not always that bad. So go ahead and make yourself contactable! Please note that the names used in the below cases are changed due to privacy reasons, and that these are derived from the experience of real people.

Case 1 – Sharing contact detail can save someone’s life: – A person named Kishore is buying life-saving drugs at a medical store, as one of his colleagues Akash has just met with an accident. While the shopkeeper is getting medicines, the store owner requests Kishore to fill up his mobile number and email address at a slip that pharmacy uses to build their customer base; which in that situation annoys Kishore. But after a 2^nd thought, he decides to put down the information on that slip.

Just as Kishore is driving his car outside of the parking lot, he gets a call from the store owner informing him that he forgot to pick one of the small medicine packets containing some life-saving drugs. He immediately collects the packet that contains injections, and while driving towards the Hospital, he thinks that there would have been no other way in which he could have been contacted and that enabled him to reach with the required medicines at hospital on time.

Case 2 – Sharing contact details can save someone from cyber crimes: – Vishal recently went out at a popular pub with some of his clients. They all had quite a merry time and while paying the bill on his table, he stumbled on the feedback-form of the pub. After hesitating initially, he still decides to fill up the same and provide his contact information. Later the same night, someone tries to call him on his cell but gets no response as Vishal has already slept.

The next morning Vishal sees the missed calls and an email notification on his mobile phone screen. He first checks the missed calls and wonder why someone might have tried calling him in wee hours. Seeing unknown numbers, he then checks his email and notices that he has an email from the pub where he had been last night informing him that he forgot to pick up his debit card last night after paying the bill. He is astonished as to how could possibly the pub authorities would have contacted him if he hadn’t filled out that feedback form. He checks those numbers and as you all would guess, they were of the same pub!

So you see the flipside now… don’t you?

Emails and Email Marketing may not be very popular amongst all but companies and corporates using this powerful digital marketing tool certainly know it and are well versed with the dramatic changes that emails can bring about in the business of the companies not only in terms of marketing and brand building of the company, but also scale up the revenue and the net ROI of the companies. Over a period of time we have certainly seen the effectiveness of emails in our respective business. Emails have helped online marketers to reach millions of people at the ease of a click.

Emails have helped the Marketers to reach to people and bring considerable business to the companies. With the help of emails, it has become slightly easy to know your customers since sending targeted and personalized emails is also possible. But its time now that we start to think what more can be done with the help of emails. Innovation is the key to this thought. Marketers should now find ways to make the use of emails in more engagging  way.
The email marketers have become reluctant to think about doing more with emails. Just sending mails on the database you have or sourcing it from other resellers wont help you to accomplish the most important aspect and motive of email marketing – User engagement and website traffic. Email Campaigns give you a good start and helps the marketers to know what is good for them. The real success of any email campaign is judged by the end traffic that is diverted to the website or leads (for companies just promoting products off the web).

The traffic for any website can be increased over a period of time by properly segmenting the kind and type of traffic with use of generic profiles and offers to make the user click and register. In India, we can find many e-commerce portals offering extensive products in all ranges and sizes. One can easily notice the clean and indexed website contents on the opening page. This hasn’t been done overnight or in a short period. The companies who look to develop user engagement in order to divert readers to their website and see an increase in the traffic need to study the following points:

1. It is very important to segment the website for users with different taste and trying to create segments in which we can fit all the traffic.
2. Observe which segment of products get the maximum hits or clicks in the website.
3. Target/re-Target the users interested for the Product segment.
4. Drive engagement to extract details for Profiling.
5. Include social media and integrate your websites to know your users better.
6. Stay in touch with the active database not bug them often.
7. Develop the re-target strategy for inactive users.
8. Introduce Viral Marketing to extend reach.

Marketers just cannot be dependent only on emails to do all the work, emails have to be supported with research and methods that can help to enhance the end to end productivity of the campaigns. Think more to innovate more. One solution cannot solve all the problems but many solutions when gathered together to find the generic solution can solve the worst problems easily. One cannot stop to think as users do not like the monotonous emails or websites. You have to come out of the lazy mode and observe around you what people like more because it does not matter what you like, what really matters is what your target audience likes. Think more to get more.

How can you get more email subscribers to open and act on our messages? This is one question every email marketer, whether veteran or newcomer, successful or struggling, big-list or small-list owner, is seeking to answer. More than ever, relevance – the right message at the right time from someone the subscriber expects to see in the inbox – will help our messages cut through the clutter and get noticed, opened and acted on.

Similarly Engagement is the new buzz in the market and we all know how engagement is a crucial aspect for improving the Inbox delivery.

Both these aspects, Engagement and Relevance are co-related and play a crucial role in improving the ROI for your email campaigns.

People’s mailboxes are on the verge of bursting and the amount of advertisements is increasing by the minute, thus highlighting the importance of relevance. It is meaningless for a Job portal to send an email to a 65 year old guy or even for MacDonalds to sell pork in Arab countries, since the acceptance level of these groups for the products is negligible.

Now a day’s consumers are bombarded with an infinite number of advertisements and promotional messages. So, if something does not seem relevant to them, they immediately “DELETE” it or mark it as “SPAM”

Both the above activities by the reader hurts sender reputation and this is a major factor, depending on which ISP’s decide whether to deliver the mail to inbox or spam or to completely block it.

Thus, only if we as marketers can successfully get past this puddle of relevant email content would we reach the next stage of improving our Email campaigns that is the Engagement level of the reader.

This consumer behavior spells out a new success mantra for all online marketers:

Keep relevance in your mind when devising your marketing campaign and automatically it would leverage the engagement and inbox delivery aspect associated with the campaign.

Ways to make your Emailer relevant:

• We need to segment your customer database based on existing records, prior email interactions and preference center data.

• The email must be tailored to fit all available data you have for that person. This includes buying habits, sex, age, geographic location, and any additional information you may have captured from a preference center on your website.

Yes what’s in it for me? This is why you are reading this blog. How will this benefit me? What will i gain from this? This question can be seen from both customer and marketer side. A customer buys a product only when it benefits him/her in some or the other way, same is with the marketer- how to get a new client and what profit can I get from it. This concept can be applied even to email marketing. Why should I read a particular email, is the content useful for me? One has many questions in mind before opening the email.

A reader usually spends just 1 to 2 seconds to scan the subject line and the sender id, if you can get the readers attention in that 2 seconds then you have won just half battle.

If i get mail with subject line as: “King’s Speech an Oscar winner movie, now showing at XYZ!”. There are chances I won’t open that mail as all the information is already provided. But if that same subject line is tweaked as “ Now showing Oscar winner movies at XYZ!” there will be a curiosity about the movies.

Next comes the creativity part. How you design your HTML template. It should be of interest to the reader. The content should be informative and not too descriptive. The content and the subject line should be at par which can engage a reader and the reader builds a relation with the brand. The template should have call to action which can direct the user to your website and then get a sale out of it. If this is done then the whole battle is won.

So gear-up yourself and check why you open a particular email and think from the clients perspective.

You gained for what you invested.

Hi This is Tanishq and we are in year 2015.

What a day! Sunrises from the east, Birds chatting, cool morning whether and every one  heading to their work, everything is so natural, no one ever thought that something so natural will ever change.

People opening their email accounts and checking their inboxes and reading their solicited emails. Checking Inbox is the first thing you do once you open your email account after looking at the no. of emails you have – I know it takes lot of courage to avoid looking at no. of emails cluttered in your inbox and more painful is to find out the ligitimate ones out of them. This whole things is pretty natural but this day it wasn’t.

People actually browsed their email accounts, opened their Junk folder and enjoyed looking at several unsolicited emails. What a shock bookie!!

I’m in a Dilemma, did any one think that readers will fall in love with their Junk folders than Inboxes. Now what should email marketer work on Best Practices to put the emails in junk.

Imagine a client saying “ Hey I’m really worried most of my emails are landing into Inbox? Please do something”

Damn! What has happen to the world- I guess readers have changed their behaviour and now definition of Inbox and spam is controversial  for them.

If email Marketing was one Universe then this reader behaviour is a dent in the universe. What if there was an Email Marketing industry body on the top to monitor the changing trends and take measure to do the right thing. Food for a thought isn’t it!

I smiled aimlessly thinking the funniest part amongst all of this that how an email marketer takes guarantee that I will deliver your emails in junk, a place where most of the people  check their emails today. Lets look at one small conversation between Saradarji(Email Service Provider) and brand doing email marketing.

Brand- Please see to it that my emails land in spam

Sardarji- Oh Madame don’t worry we are known for our spam deliveries

Brand- Good so I don’t want my single email to land in Inbox

Sardarji- Oh we have not deliver single email in Inbox since we started our business.

Brand- Earlier you use to assure guaratnteed Inbox deliver to us during old times

Sardarji- Hmm…well Madam I we actually not spam but this time we spam old is forget please

Brand- Well I don’t understand what you said.

Sardarji- Thanks you – we promise it will be done Madam

Brand-  Ok, but stop calling me Madam. My name is Charles. Idiot!

What a conversation and what a day. A perfect unusual day and I’m amazed to see changing behaviours of readers.

Finally it would have been great if we had an email governing body to set charters so as to stop growing legitimate emails in spam folders and unsolicited emails in the Inbox.

Its Friday evening and this is Tanishq signing off and still wonderning about this unusual perfect day.

It takes no rocket science to understand a very simple fact – The person sitting next to you knows more than you do even if he has arrived late. Social Media is THE TOOL and I bet you were not able to think about it. This is because status updates and tweets have become a part of the human life just like food shelter and clothes. In olden times people used to say – “Roti, Kapda aur Makaan” and today’s new generation says – Food, Clothing, Shelter and Facebook (or you might want to say Twitter).

If you fail to understand the odd behavior of people around you, get the mobile websites of facebook or twitter and just go through their profiles and you will understand all of it. No mystery or puzzle will be left unsolved. The main reason why facebook succeeded wasn’t because people wanted to join in and share their status or info, it was because people are more interested more into others life than their own and this is the sole reason why people spend hours and hours hopping on to same walls and pics that they have seen previously because all of them know that somewhere in those same pages lies a new secret that they might not have known.

Coming to the new days of social world are “TWEETS” and people rarely tweet about their own agenda or incident. We all know why this happens and still knowingly, we still log on and re-tweet them just to make followers. Generating more and more followers has become a Red Badge of Honor, do keep in mind that the content goes irrelevant if the followers are in good numbers. People won’t get upset if the electricity fails and the AC is not working, what pisses the users off is the failure to access their profiles. The world of information resided in Google and now it is on social media.

Now lets think of a different side of this entire social world. We now know that people log in and stay on those pages for a long time. Citing an eg for the same is facebook has over 25 million users in INDIA and average time spent by each Indian is 6 minutes or more than 360 seconds and for a businessman 10 seconds of those is more than enough to generate revenue. However with an interest in Digital Marketing, I would look into the aspect of traffic diversion on these sites. The companies do not have to move people out of these websites, they just have to get into these websites and make users to browse through pages and do business making people still believe that all whatever is happening is FUN. Users browsing on the facebook or twitter would not be wanting to move away from the URL – so don’t even try it.

Come back with a Twist – companies should make their page on these websites since they have no cost attached and you can manage it like a users manage their own page. You will have a vast space to market yourself, build your brand and advertise your products and sales will take care of its own. If people are made to believe that they can find something better on those pages, it would be easy to take them away to your own company page and make them purchase your product or service. The key is to make users see what they want to and a wall of facebook or a catchy tweet would make it easy because there is something for the user in it.

The clock has already started ticking and the business has started making money out of it. Social Media has now become an ethnic part of the business agenda and companies have understood that give people what they like at the place where they want to stay and that will make the connection of their brand with user’s memory. People will login to surely check whats going in the neighborhood but they won’t forget to glance to your company page and thats where marketers have to bang on and drive the user towards their website and the users may not buy at once, but you make the user browse and it ain’t gonna be window shopping for long. Business is bound to come by to you, you just have to be ready to take it.

These days with the increasing use of Email marketing as a medium of communication for corporates, there is one word which is hampering its productivity: that is SPAM.

Solving the spam issue has become the 1st priority for any email marketer, whereas there are so many other aspects like the email content, reports and customer behavior analysis which majorly contribute in making your campaigns more effective and improving the ROI.

A company indulges in heavy promotion through various other forms of media like television, newspapers and there is spam happening is such cases as well. Let’s see how we can define spam in such cases.

When we as a user are watching television, we tend to switch channels and avoid advertisements and similar is the case for newspapers. Isn’t this similar to spam?? Your message has not been communicated to the target audience.
What do we do in such a case?
A company would normally try to make the advertisement more interesting and include more creative aspects to improve customer engagement.
Why can’t the same be done for an Email, is the question to be answered and that’s exactly where the solution lies.

There are certain things we can look into to improve customer engagement.

- Catchy subject line to tempt the reader to open the email. (Give the reader an idea on how opening the reader is going to benefit him)
- Proper Call to action in the Content.
- Give the reader a reason to click on your email. (Click here to get 50% off or get a gift)
- Social Media links.
- GIF images which would attract reader attention.
- Customer Feedback campaigns.
- Refer a friend campaigns. (Giving some added discounts for referring a friend)

Simple Calculation – Comparatively speaking majority of our mails land in Inbox, now doesn’t it sound more valid to concentrate on the mails landing in Inbox rather than the ones where there are some delivery issues. Surely there can be effort made to improve on the Inbox delivery, but an email marketer shouldn’t walk with the belief that if he resolves the spam issue he is going to have the most effective campaign.

So, folks let’s concentrate on the mails landing in Inbox and see how we can create a better impact on the readers by better content, eventually by treading  on Best Practices and with proper guidance from ESPs Inbox deliveries can be enhanced and spam can be controlled.

Since childhood one is taught to compete. Take it school, extra curricular, graduation/PG, job. Everywhere there is a race, race to out-stand in every work we do. In this internet savvy environment there is a race to increase the client base, provide best services, increase traffic, increase revenue and the list can go on.

Getting down to some facts: More than 294 bn email messages are sent every day around the globe, which means 2.8 mn emails are sent every second and some 90 trillion emails are sent per year.

In 2010:

• 1.9 billion e-mailers sent 107 TRILLION emails
• 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010). Most are in Asia.
• 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.
• 255 million – The number of websites as of December 2010.

*Source: http://www.businessinsider.com

With such big figures one can imagine how many emails a person would be receiving in a day. Here the race starts with reaching the Inbox. An ESP takes the responsibility to guide the marketer to ensure that an email gets delivered and that too in Inbox. Some guidelines can be followed while doing email marketing. Like:

• Keeping the subject line relevant to the mailer content and avoid using All CAPS in it.
• The email content should be a combination of text and image. This also helps for mobile devices to read an email if in text format.
• Using opt-in/double opt-in database.
• Go for permission based email marketing.
• Based on the subscriber behavior, send them relevant emails. This increase the subscriber engagement and help in retaining the customer.
• Keep a track of ISP’s behavior and improvise it in your email campaigns.

Who reaches to the Inbox first or who finally makes it to Inbox. This also depends on how good your IP/domain reputation is with the ISP’s. So start working on the basics and get ready to race with your competitors.

It is not always that slow and steady wins the race but working steadily with good strategy and strong basics would definitely let you win the race!!!

Must be wondering which Gandhi we are talking about. A name which is praised as Father of the Indian nation, when did he send an email??

Well Mahatma Gandhi once said Be the change you want to see in the world and the quote is universally applicable every where, also in Email Marketing Arena.

I was speaking to a marketer the other day and he said I wish to send email to everyone in this world, I asked him how many prmotional emails do you receive every day

He said 15- 20 emails a day and mostly are opt-in.

I asked him what if every one in the world wants to send email to you??

Stunned marketer said thats like 130 cr email in one day in my mail box, he said thats

like a 3^rd world war to me, I said indeed so you can’t send email to every one in the World

If you really were thinking of spamming or sending unsolicited emails, drop that idea right away.

Its not useful and will take you to the magnetic world of phishing and spamming. Email Marketers

themselves receives hundreds of spam emails every day still they would like to send 100 more on

their own. Treat every inbox like your own, treat every one’s time preacious like your own and treat

everyone’s email address as important as yours one.

The three important things which I’m trying to potray here is

1. Inbox should not be made cluttered with insignificant emails
2. If you can’t manage to read all your emails how can someone else do it
3. Every email id should have given permission to send email

Gandhiji’s words have made the nation free but our thoughts are still abandoned. An email marketer should help clean the world from spam and not promote it, Everyone has a Ram inside them, so why not bring it up.

Email marketing is one of the fastest growing sectors with regular updates in the market. The recent buzz in the Email marketing industry is Social Media. Email marketers are preferring to use their social media links in the templates improve their presence on the Social network. It is a practice which is extensively been followed by Email marketers.

Almost half the world is actively present on these social networking websites and there could be no other better platform which would provide the companies to freely promote their products and services to such a wide audience.

Inclusion of Social Media links in the Email content has majorly two benefits:

• Viral Marketing – Brand Awareness to a higher segment.
• Engagement – Having a Social media link helps improve the engagement level of the audience with your email content, thus helping us improve on the Inbox delivery since majorly ISP’s tend to consider the engagement level as a crucial parameter for Inbox delivery.

Since every coin has two sides – looking at the other side, just a thought which crossed my mind was – Is Social Media cannibalizing the Email marketing industry?

Situation:

Say 10 years down the line, if I as an Email marketer have my complete subscriber base actively present on Facebook/Twitter, then surely the frequency of mails from my end would go down, since I see that my Facebook postings or tweets on Twitter are driving a higher or equivalent amount of traffic to my website for no cost as compared to Emails where I have to incur additional cost.

Just a thought my friends….

But, I strongly believe that Email marketing is a field which cannot be replaced by any other medium – since there are so many dynamic aspects which no other medium can provide, listing down a few would be:

1)      Subject Line – Initial interaction

2)      Creative Content – To convert the want in a need

3)      Brand awareness – Acting as a constant reminder to the reader