Email marketing

Last updated

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

Contents

History

Email marketing has evolved rapidly alongside the technological growth of the 21st century. Before this growth, when emails were novelties to most customers, email marketing was not as effective. In 1978, Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) sent out the first mass email [1] to approximately 400 potential clients via the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). He claimed that this resulted in $13 million worth of sales of DEC products, [2] and highlighted the potential of marketing through mass emails.

Types

Email marketing can be carried out through different types of emails:

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customer's action with a company. To be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these communications' primary purpose must be "to facilitate, complete or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender" along with a few other narrow definitions of transactional messaging. [3] Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status emails, reorder emails, and email receipts.

The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that triggered it. But, due to their high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email newsletters), transactional emails are an opportunity to introduce or extend the email relationship with customers or subscribers; to anticipate and answer questions; or to cross-sell or up-sell products or services. [4]

Direct emails

Direct email involves sending an email solely to communicate a promotional message (for example, a special offer or a product catalog). Companies usually collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional messages to, or they rent a list of email addresses from service companies. [5]

Comparison to traditional mail

There are both advantages and disadvantages to using email marketing in comparison to traditional advertising mail.

Advantages

Email marketing is popular with companies for several reasons:

Disadvantages

Opt-in email advertising

Opt-in email advertising, or permission marketing, is advertising via email whereby the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. [15]

A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's customers. Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events or promotions, or new products. [16] In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter.

With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in their database, marketers can send out promotional materials automatically using autoresponders—known as drip marketing. They can also segment their promotions to specific market segments. [17]

Australia

The Australian Spam Act 2003 is enforced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, widely known as "ACMA". The act defines the term unsolicited electronic messages, states how unsubscribe functions must work for commercial messages, and gives other key information. Fines range with three fines of AU$110,000 being issued to Virgin Blue Airlines (2011), Tiger Airways Holdings Limited (2012) and Cellar master Wines Pty Limited (2013). [18]

Canada

The "Canada Anti-Spam Law" (CASL) went into effect on July 1, 2014. [19] CASL requires an explicit or implicit opt-in from users, and the maximum fines for noncompliance are CA$1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses. [20]

European Union and UK

In 2002 the European Union (EU) introduced the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. Article 13 of the Directive prohibits the use of personal email addresses for marketing purposes. The Directive establishes the opt-in regime, where unsolicited emails may be sent only with the prior agreement of the recipient; this does not apply to business email addresses. The UK gives sole traders and members of unincorporated partnerships the same protection as private individuals.

The directive has since been incorporated into the laws of member states. In the UK it is covered under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 [21] and applies to all organizations that send out marketing by some form of electronic communication.

The GDPR in 2018 imposed "a number of new requirements on companies that collect, store and process personal data from EU users, which impacts email marketers" - in particular, users' right to access information held about them; and the right to have all such information deleted at their request.[ citation needed ]

United States

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was passed by Congress as a direct response to the growing number of complaints over spam emails. [22] Congress determined that the US government was showing an increased interest in the regulation of commercial electronic mail nationally, that those who send commercial emails should not mislead recipients over the source or content of them, and that all recipients of such emails have a right to decline them. The act authorizes a US$16,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient. [23] However, it does not ban spam emailing outright, but imposes laws on using deceptive marketing methods through headings which are "materially false or misleading". In addition, there are conditions that email marketers must meet in terms of their format, their content and labeling. As a result, many commercial email marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the act. A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the act. To comply with the act's regulation of commercial email, services also typically require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.[ citation needed ]

In addition to satisfying legal requirements, email service providers (ESPs) began to help customers establish and manage their own email marketing campaigns. The service providers supply email templates and general best practices, as well as methods for handling subscriptions and cancellations automatically. Some ESPs will provide insight and assistance with deliverability issues for major email providers. They also provide statistics about the number of messages received and opened, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.

The CAN-SPAM Act was updated with some new regulations including a no-fee provision for opting out, further definition of "sender", post office or private mail boxes count as a "valid physical postal address" and definition of "person". These new provisions went into effect on July 7, 2008. [24] [25]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spamming</span> Unsolicited electronic messages, especially advertisements

Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, non-commercial proselytizing, or any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.

A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the list".

Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CAN-SPAM Act of 2003</span> American law to regulate bulk e-mail

The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 is a law passed in 2003 establishing the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail. The law requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce its provisions. Introduced by Republican Conrad Burns, the act passed both the House and Senate during the 108th United States Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2003 and was enacted on January 1, 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile phone spam</span> Unwanted communication through a mobile phone

Mobile phone spam is a form of spam, directed at the text messaging or other communications services of mobile phones or smartphones. As the popularity of mobile phones surged in the early 2000s, frequent users of text messaging began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited commercial advertisements being sent to their telephones through text messaging. This can be particularly annoying for the recipient because, unlike in email, some recipients may be charged a fee for every message received, including spam. Mobile phone spam is generally less pervasive than email spam, where in 2010 around 90% of email is spam. The amount of mobile spam varies widely from region to region. In North America, mobile spam steadily increased after 2008 and accounted for half of all mobile phone traffic by 2019. In parts of Asia up to 30% of messages were spam in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Email spam</span> Unsolicited electronic advertising by email

Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive. Email spam has steadily grown since the early 1990s, and by 2014 was estimated to account for around 90% of total email traffic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Direct marketing</span> Model of communicating discounts and other sales offers

Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. In contrast to direct marketing, advertising is more of a mass-message nature.

The term opt-out refers to several methods by which individuals can avoid receiving unsolicited product or service information. This option is usually associated with direct marketing campaigns such as e-mail marketing or direct mail. A list of those who have opted out is called a Robinson list.

Email harvesting or scraping is the process of obtaining lists of email addresses using various methods. Typically these are then used for bulk email or spam.

Wayne Mansfield, of Perth, Western Australia, was the head of direct marketing business T3 Direct Marketing, operating under a series of two-dollar companies, and in 2005 became the first Australian to be prosecuted for email spamming.

Opt-in email is a term used when someone is not initially added to an emailing list and is instead given the option to join the emailing list. Typically, this is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising. Opt-out emails do not ask for permission to send emails, these emails are typically criticized as unsolicited bulk emails, better known as spam.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

A challenge–response system is a type of that automatically sends a reply with a challenge to the (alleged) sender of an incoming e-mail. It was originally designed in 1997 by Stan Weatherby, and was called Email Verification. In this reply, the purported sender is asked to perform some action to assure delivery of the original message, which would otherwise not be delivered. The action to perform typically takes relatively little effort to do once, but great effort to perform in large numbers. This effectively filters out spammers. Challenge–response systems only need to send challenges to unknown senders. Senders that have previously performed the challenging action, or who have previously been sent e-mail(s) to, would be automatically receive a challenge.

The Data & Marketing Association formerly, Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is a trade organization for marketers. In 2017, their web site stated, "Yes, 100 years ago we were the Direct Mail Marketing Association and then the Direct Marketing Association. Now we embrace …"

Yesmail Interactive, is now known as Data Axle. The email marketing provider was previously headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Data Axle is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Omaha, Toronto, London and Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feedback loop (email)</span> Process of forwarding user complaints to senders

A feedback loop (FBL), sometimes called a complaint feedback loop, is an inter-organizational form of feedback by which a mailbox provider (MP) forwards the complaints originating from their users to the sender's organizations. MPs can receive users' complaints by placing report spam buttons on their webmail pages, or in their email client, or via help desks. The message sender's organization, often an email service provider, has to come to an agreement with each MP from which they want to collect users' complaints.

The history of email spam reaches back to the mid-1990s when commercial use of the internet first became possible - and marketers and publicists began to test what was possible.

The Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, is Canada's anti-spam legislation that received Royal Assent on December 15, 2010. The Act replaced Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA), which was passed by the House of Commons, but died due to the prorogation of the second session of the 40th Canadian Parliament on December 30, 2009. The Act went into effect July 1, 2014.

<i>Omega World Travel, Inc. v. Mummagraphics, Inc.</i>

Omega World Travel, Inc. v. Mummagraphics, Inc., 469 F.3d 348, is a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in which Mummagraphics, Inc. is sued by Omega World Travel, Inc. (Omega) and Cruise.com after Mummagraphic alleged that they received 11 commercial e-mail messages in violation of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 as well as Oklahoma state law. In the initial filing, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia had awarded summary judgment to Omega on all of Mummagraphics' claims finding that the commercial emails from Omega did not violate the CAN-SPAM Act, and that the CAN-SPAM Act preempted Oklahoma state law. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

A cold email is an unsolicited e-mail that is sent to a receiver without prior contact. It could also be defined as the email equivalent of cold calling. Cold emailing is a subset of email marketing and differs from transactional and warm emailing.

References

  1. "spam | unsolicited e-mail" . Retrieved September 19, 2016.
  2. Smith, Gina (3 December 2007). "Unsung innovators: Gary Thuerk, the father of spam". Computerworld. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
  3. "PUBLIC LAW 108–187—DEC. 16, 2003 117 STAT. 2699" (PDF). U.S Government GPO.
  4. Adikesavan, T. (21 August 2014). Management Information Systems Best Practices and Applications in Business. PHI Learning Pvt. ISBN   978-8120348967 . Retrieved July 10, 2015.
  5. "EMAIL MARKETING: A PARADIGM SHIFT TO MARKETING" (PDF). International Journal of Advanced Research in Management and Social Sciences. ISSN: 2278-6236.
  6. "Email Marketing: Success Factors". eprints.kingston.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
  7. Babet, Addou (2020). "Utilization of personalization in marketing automation and email marketing".
  8. Fabian, Benjamin; Bender, Benedict; Weimann, Lars (2015-03-04). "E-Mail Tracking in Online Marketing - Methods, Detection, and Usage". Wirtschaftsinformatik Proceedings 2015.
  9. Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Tracking surveys" Archived 2009-03-12 at the Wayback Machine , March 2000 – March 2009
  10. How Scheduling Affects Rates Archived 2013-05-18 at the Wayback Machine . Mailermailer.com (July 2012). Retrieved on July 28, 2013.
  11. BtoB Magazine, "Early Email Blasts Results in Higher Click & Open Rates" Archived 2011-11-22 at the Wayback Machine , September 2011
  12. Roberts, A. "Email deliverability is on the decline: report", ClickZ
  13. "Consumer Information". Consumer Information. Archived from the original on January 16, 2007. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
  14. Hsin Chang, Hsin; Rizal, Hamid; Amin, Hanudin (2013-01-01). "The determinants of consumer behavior towards email advertisement". Internet Research. 23 (3): 316–337. doi:10.1108/10662241311331754. ISSN   1066-2243.
  15. Fairhead, N. (2003) "All hail the brave new world of permission marketing via email" (Media 16, August 2003)
  16. Dilworth, Dianna (2007). "Ruth's Chris Steak House sends sizzling e-mails for special occasions". DMNews. Archived from the original on February 18, 2010. Retrieved February 19, 2008.
  17. O'Brian J. & Montazemia, A. (2004) Management Information Systems (Canada: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd.)
  18. "Spam: enforcement actions". Australian Communications and Media Authority. Archived from the original on February 29, 2016. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
  19. Moorcraft, Bethan. "Law could force idle brokers back to dark ages". Insurance Business. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
  20. "Canada's law on spam". Government of Canada. Retrieved July 19, 2014..
  21. PECR 2003, as amended.
  22. "CANSPAM Act of 2003" (PDF). ftc.gov. PUBLIC LAW 108-187--DEC. 16, 2003. 16 December 2003. Retrieved 16 Oct 2024.
  23. "CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business". FTC.gov. BCP Business Center. 2 September 2009. Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  24. "FTC Approves New Rule Provision Under The CAN-SPAM Act". FTC.gov. June 24, 2011.
  25. "16 CFR Part 316 Definitions and Implementation Under the CAN–SPAM Act; Final Rule" (PDF). FTC.gov. May 21, 2008.