Email Marketing Via Direct Mail Marketing – Which One Works For Special Events?

Well before we can answer the question it would help if we identify what each one is.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing does not use the conventional tri-media forms of advertising such as TV. radio or newspapers, but instead use brochures, fliers, billboards and other forms of advertising that is placed directly in front of consumers, hence the name – direct!

Direct marketing is used as a marketing tool by small to medium sized companies regularly as it is generally cheaper than TV and newspaper and campaigns can be targeted.

Direct marketing can easily be measured. If a company sends out 1000 leaflets and only gets 5 replies, then they know something could be wrong. (depending on the campaign)

Direct marketing is full in the face advertising and says “here is the product – now do something!”

Direct Mail however has one big advantage that you can send directly to potential customers homes, however the cost of envelopes, printing and postage may make this expensive to do.

Email marketing

So email marketing could be considered a form of direct marketing, however it has one big advantage over traditional forms of advertising and marketing and that is that due to tough spam laws, email marketing is permission based normally.

Permission based means that the recipient of the email gave permission to the sender to send the email.

Often this is done via an opt-in box on a website. The reader visits the site and gives permission by entering their name and email into a box in order to receive the information.

The fantastic thing about this is that it is directly targeted towards a specific subject and the sender knows you are interested in the topic.

If you were not interested in what the website is offering, you would not give permission for them to send you information.

Email marketing also allows the sender to regularly send emails to the reader and over time they will form a relationship which could make it easier to sell in the future.

Messages can also be personalized and as long or short as the sender wants.

The downside to email marketing is that some people (like me) receive hundreds of emails a day and delete all that don’t grab attention immediately, even without reading them.

And a bigger downside is that your potential customer has to have internet access or they won’t get to see your message, so you could potentially be losing a lot of customers who either do not have (some still exist) internet or those who do not use on a regular basis.

Email Marketing Via Direct Mail Marketing

So who wins in the battle of email marketing via direct mail marketing?

Well you may have reached the conclusion that they can effectively be used together and it you said that then I would agree with you.

I often see a billboard or magazine advert (direct marketing) that catches my attention, then grab the website address go the their website and ask for more information via email (email marketing) and I am sure you also have experience this.

Email marketing has a number of electronic systems that need to be put in place such as websites, auto-responders and other software and SEO needs to be considered as well and I have been doing all of this for my own websites and marketing for a number of years now and if you would like help setting up your own system, let me know here.

If you want to see how an email marketing system works why not opt-in my magazine by entering your name and email address in the box above.