MARKETING ONLINE

Prarthana Poddar 

II B.Com(MM) 

INTRODUCTION

       Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications. In its broadest sense, the term covers every email you ever send to a customer, potential customer or public venue. In general, though, it's used to refer to:

• Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy again 
• Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship 
• Placing your marketing messages or advertisements in emails sent by other people. 
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E-MARKETING
        Done well, e-mail permission marketing—where members choose to receive your information online—builds your credit union’s member relationships. Carefully evaluate and make decisions about these key factors that can make or break an e-mail campaign or e-mail newsletter:

1. What format? Rich media (sound, video, animation), HTML (hypertext markup language), or text? While e-mail marketing messages are formatted in HTML about 61% of the time, 62% of consumers prefer to receive text e-mail, reports B2Buzz, an e-mail newsletter from B2Bworks, a digital marketing firm in Chicago. This could be because consumers seek valuable content, while marketers want the greater branding and visual impact possible with HTML or rich media. A 2001 study by Double-click, a New York-based e-marketing firm, offers a different viewpoint. It shows 22% of consumers prefer text, 37% prefer HTML, 36% don’t care, and 5% didn’t know. You can address formatting in two ways: 

• Ask members what format they prefer, and give them a choice; and 

• Make sure your e-mail delivery system supports multipart e-mail formats that deliver e-mail in the format your members’ various e-mail clients’ support. Multipart e-mail formats become important because e-mail clients (such as America Online, Lotus Notes, Outlook, Eudora, Netscape) and Web mail providers such as Yahoo! and Hotmail process HTML differently. This makes it important to test your e-mail on different clients before mailing it. 

2. How often? Balance your communication needs with members’ desire to receive information from you. Carefully evaluate your e-mail frequency to members. Most businesses send such information monthly, according to Double-click.

3. When? What time of day, and what day of the week? If you have a periodic email, test different delivery times. Once you find an optimal time, stick with it. Research shows consumers like a periodic, scheduled delivery time for information they value. This creates and reinforces the relationship you’re looking for in your e-mail communications. For consumer marketers, click through rates are highest on Sunday, says Double-click.

4. What type of content? Your content strategy should parallel and support your overall marketing strategy. If you provide a member newsletter via e-mail, include value-added information to make the newsletter useful to members. Also evaluate writing style, subject matter, and the degree of personalization your member databases allow. Copy should be easy for members to scan, with intuitive links to more in-depth information on your Web site.

5. What measures of success? E-marketing allows you to more effectively create goals and evaluate metrics than offline marketing activities.

CONCLUSION
       The use of a website to promote your affiliate products is a good idea but it is not necessary. You can use the alternate methods to promote your affiliate products and links. The most popular among these methods are email marketing, writing to forums, article writing and offline promotion like classified ads. The main idea is that instead of promoting your website you will directly promote your affiliate links and people will directly go to the merchant website by clicking your affiliate links to purchase the products. This way you do not have to pay extra for your website creation and maintenance.