The Hand Made Product Shopping Directory: Email And Your Marketing Efforts

The concept of using email as part of a marketing plan can be a touchy subject these days. The fact that we all are flooded with Spam these days is a growing problem for us all and no one wants to be tagged with the title of Spammer. So how do we use email effectively in our marketing efforts?

Let me dispel a common myth held by many on line merchants. Particularly those that have their store on sites like ebay or any of the many other Cyber Mall formatted store hosting sites. Most of these sites have given way to the pressure of some buyer advocate groups and forbid a seller to contact a customer they have already done business with. In the first place, that customer is yours as the seller. Not the hosting site’s. In most instances the hosting site did little if anything to bring that customer to your store. It is bad enough that these hosting sites charge some outrageous fees at times, what they really want to do is run your business. Don’t let them. I’m not saying that you should abuse your rights as a seller and bombard a previous customer with solicitations either but when used properly, email can be an important part of your marketing.

One of the first thing you should remember is that you should never use a store’s hosting site’s communication system to conduct business with your customers. After the first initial contact, all communications with a customer should be done using your own business email. If a customer isn’t willing to provide you their email address, there isn’t much you can do about it. Not everyone feel like this but any customer who isn’t willing to provide us with their email at the initial sale isn’t a customer we really want to do business with in the future. It just leaves the entire sale process open for problems if you can’t communicate with a customer. I always ask myself, “are we being scammed” and that feeling doesn’t go away until the money is in the bank. These types of customers are also the type that usually cause you problems in one form or another.

All this said, there are some real advantages of using email as a part of your marketing. Stefan Pollard from Ecommerce Times wrote an excellent article about the best way to use email. I suggest reading it as it gives the reader some really good information. This is the article’s link.

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/62491.html?welcome=1207914542

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