What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the popular tools internet marketers use.

Email Marketing System Overview:

A lot of people know what email marketing is. It is well known that “Email marketing is about marketing products via email messages”. This is what the general public knows about email marketing and it’s true to some extent.

Basic Requirements of Email Marketing:

The first thing to start with is the list of people you will send emails to with your email marketing tool. In the online marketing world this list of subscribers is referred to as "email marketing list". You must have read online that "the money is in the list", etc. These lists are the list of subscribers who have agreed to receive email messages from you.

Email Marketing: Do it legally!

Sending unsolicited emails to individuals who have not consented to receive emails from the sender is called spam.

Under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, it is illegal to send random emails and it is an offence punishable by law.

Most of the online marketers don't know about this and they begin to send promotional emails to any email address they can get. It is highly recommended that you avoid spamming individuals as this may lead to legal action being taken against you and this will also tarnish your reputation online.

Where do you find the list?

The list of individuals you can send emails to can either be grown or you can pay for them.

List building:

List building is an ongoing, long-term activity. You may have seen square boxes or pop-ups on websites asking for your name and email address to send free updates or sign up for their free newsletter. You will become a subscriber to their site once you enter your name and email ID in the box.

ALSO READ: Smart Business Email Marketing

When you enter your name and email address in the form, you "opt-in" to receive emails from that specific site and the list is called the "opt-in list". Your email and name are saved in the program's database, which can send automatic emails to an entire group of subscribers (ie the list) at preset intervals. For instance, the sotware can send welcome emails to everyone who subscribes to the list. This software will also send another email after, for example, 4 days from the date the subscriber joined, etc. This program is called "an autoresponder".

If you own a websites, you can create your own list by building opt-in forms on your websites. Many of the autoresponder software available online provide easy-to-use tools for creating Opt In forms and boxes that you can easily embed on your websites.

Purchasing Email Marketing List:

There are many websites that sell email lists to online marketers. A subscription list can consist of 1000 people or it can contain millions of subscribers. The more people on the menu, the more the fee you have to pay for the list.

Opinions vary on how effective it is to pay for email marketing subscribers, but it is recommended that you purchase the lists only if the site is trusted you're buying your email marketing list of subscribers from and this list targets a particular group of individuals interested in a given niche.

ALSO READ: Creating Your First Email Marketing Campaign

The subscription list grown on wallstreetjournal.com, for example, consists of a financial niche which represents people interested in financial topics or news.

Also, the list grown on any job opportunity website will consist of a group of people who are interested in new job opportunities. For best results, it is recommended that you match people's interests with what you're promoting with your email marketing campaign.

Email Marketing. & Safe Lists:

Safe lists are groups of people who have accepted to receive promotional emails or offers from other people on the list in exchange for sending their own marketing emails to other persons.

Safe lists are created on websites that offer membership (free or paid) to individuals. Site memberships allow members to send emails to all members and in return they have to receive emails from other members.

You might be wondering why these people send emails to each other and what is the use of that?. Many of these sites have members who are online marketers who want to promote either affiliate products or their own products to others. There are different opinions about the effectiveness of safe lists, but in our opinion, safe lists are efficient so long as you have very huge safety lists. Safe lists can help you promote products right away, even if you don't own your own website.

You can promote affiliate links to members of a safe list and earn profitable commissions. You don't need to wait to create your own list when you have a safe list. So if you do not have any website or list of your own, it is better to look for safe lists to start promoting your products.

In conclusion, we can see that email marketing requires building specific lists. If you have your own website, with the help of autoresponder email marketing tool you can start building your email marketing lists. If you don't have a website, you can start email marketing via safe lists or by purchasing email addresses from trusted websites.