From face-to-face marketing to tele-marketing strategies, the realm of marketing has gone beyond what can be defined in terms of physical space. This is because the marketing world has invaded even the cyberspace where competitive marketing is prevalent.
Companies pit against each other not through television or radio commercials anymore but within the bounds of internet using emails or websites.
The use of a web-based email marketing software facilitates the rapid deployment of marketing materials to a large number of people. The same computer application provides the ability to send bulk email to target audiences. The intent is usually to send newsletters or promotional materials to opt-in lists of subscribers, although the software can be used to send unsolicited email.
The software typically includes a database that stores contact information, campaign statistics, and message history. The interface provides features necessary to run an email campaign, such as message sending, contact entry, contact importing, and reporting.
Software packages range in price from free, to about five hundred US dollars depending on what is included in the program. Some companies charge a monthly fee. There are also enterprise solutions that can cost thousands of dollars a month to manage large enterprises mass marketing email campaigns.
Among the advantages of using a web-based email marketing software is that it speeds up the process of direct marketing by sending personalized email messages to a customer or prospect.
A Gallup poll found over 67% of Internet users send and receive email regularly and email outranks other online activities including shopping, downloading music, or reading blogs.
Most email marketing software includes a scheduler which can send emails automatically. This allows marketers to adhere to a marketing plan without much intervention.
With the web-based email, frequency is free and a business or organization can communicate with people, keep teaching them, or keep trying to turn them into customers. Because some of the software is free too, this is attractive to any business trying to reduce costs.
Business can use this email marketing software to make their communications appear more professional, as many email marketing software packages include templates for attractive emails.
At the same time, most web based email marketing software has features that assist the user in the process of organizing contacts, creating campaigns, and scheduling communication.
In addition, the software usually provides features, such as an "unsubscribe check" that assist in complying with the CAN-SPAM law. An email marketing software can also provide tracking functions such as how many people have opened an email, how many emails bounced-back, how many people visited the hyperlinks provided in the marketing message, and how many people actually purchased something as a result of the email.
The common features of this software are the following:
- Ability to create and send personalized email using data from a customer database.
- Ability to import customer lists
- Automatic unsubscribe and bounce-back handling
- Ability to authenticate to SMTP and POP servers or send directly with an internal server
- HTML and plain text editor for creating messages
- Reporting features such as bounce-back reports
- Tracking abilities such as tracking who has opened the email, usually by using a web bug
Using a web-based email marketing software will not only make your business profitable but it can make you the market leader in your own business industry.
Email Software Bulk