Email Marketing

Email marketing is a method of promoting businesses through the Internet, by sending emails to people. These people are usually present on a list that might be created through a lead generation technique. The aims of email marketing could be varied. These could be:

- Directly promoting a product and interesting the recipient in visiting the website of the business.

- Creating awareness of some newly introduced feature in an existing product.

- Calling upon people to introduce new people in return of certain incentives.

- Interesting recipients in products and opportunities of affiliated businesses in a bid to bring in residual income, etc.

This technique is used by big as well as small businesses and in most cases, the business emails could be helpful to the receivers. These emails could also take the form of newsletters which may or may not be directly inviting people for some business.

 

What are the Pros of Email Marketing?

Since most marketers will send the emails to a previously generated list of people, the method is less effort-intensive. There will be effort needed to create the copy of the email but other than that, it is a largely automated process. Tracking is possible through autoresponders. These will tell the email sender if any action has been taken. Hence, manual tracking is not needed.

There is usually an instant reply for email marketing because of the speed with which emails are sent. All other methods of marketing – over the Internet or otherwise – can take a lot of time materializing into prospects.

What are the Cons of Email Marketing?

There is a very thin line between email marketing and spamming and this line can very easily be crossed. Action against spammers is quite strict, including legal recourse. The marketing needs to be subtle and done in a way that it provides some value to the receivers.

The emails can be filtered out automatically and end in junk folders. If that happens, there will be no use of this campaign. It is necessary to strictly adhere to anti-spamming rules.

SMS Marketing

As the name suggests, SMS marketing is the promotion of some kind of business by sending short messaging services, popularly known as SMS. These SMS are usually within 160 characters, so they are really short and the wording has to be precise. There are various devices used for SMS marketing. The cell phones are certainly the most popular of these; but SMS marketing is also done through a large way on Personal Digital Assistants, Blackberries and even chat messengers.

What are the Pros of SMS Marketing?

The cost-effectiveness of SMS marketing is one of its biggest benefits. It does not cost even 10-20 cents to send an SMS to a person, depending on the provider and that makes this method quite economical.

There is always a surety that the SMS will reach the intended people. With email marketing, there are a lot of problems such as the person may not get the email or may not access the email. With SMS marketing, this situation is highly unlikely to arise because people take their cell phones with them everywhere they go.

The instantaneousness of this marketing method is also of particular note. If the person who gets the SMS is interested in what it says, he or she is likely to take an immediate action. When marketers send out SMS to hundreds of people, they expect and get a lot of responses within 10 minutes of sending the SMS.

It is also a personal method of communication that makes the recipient feel special about getting the advertisement. In a group of friends when a particular person gets the promotional SMS and the others do not, it does make them feel privileged to an extent, sometimes to the point of taking action.

What are the Cons of SMS Marketing?

SMS can also be looked upon as spam. Recipients have the legal authority to take action against the person who sends the promotional SMS, just like people who get spam email can do.

The method is more targeted than cold calling, but still inferior to other methods used to promote businesses on the Internet.

The message needs to be within 160 characters. This brings the practical difficulty of conveying the message and also to make it appealing within this short limit.