In their short review entitled ‘Email Marketing as a Popular Type of Small Business Advertisement’ Mohammadi et al provides that email marketing is one of the types of online marketing that is now growing in use by companies. The authors define email marketing as sending a direct commercial and promotional messages to a group of people using email. It suggests that small businesses should invest and implement in more online strategies as this could help in the long run to expand customers, sell more, increase customer loyalty and brand awareness.
The article continues to explain that companies should take these factors into account when considering email marketing. Firstly, automated triggers which can track customers from when they register, personalise and make it relevant to the customer, do follow-ups and gain permission. However, more points that should be taken into account for email marketing advertisements were recorded by (Nosrati and Karimi 2012) which are the content of the email, purposive advertisement, the way of submission (how its sent to customers) and the server used to submit so it is not recognised as spam email.
An email I recently received was a house-list campaign from Superdrug. I occasionally open these type of emails if the title entices with an offer. As I recently got a Superdrug loyalty car, the email was sending a follow up. The email was very personalised to me etc by stating my name and how many points I have and therefore, I was more likely to open it. However, a crticism for this email marketing is that the template is quite small and simple but also informative as they have hyperlinks that allows you to communicate to Superdrug through Facebook, Google+ and many others. Assuming that this is to inform about the loyalty card, the basic template is suited, however, there should have been some offers or new products included.
In overall, the email is simple and effective as its supposed to inform me about my loyalty card. The only problem I would say about the email is vague as they could have took more advantage by inserting more content into the email to promote new products for the new Christmas season etc.
Reference: Mohammadi, M., Malekian, K., Nosrati, M., & Karimi, R. (2013). Email Marketing as a Popular Type of Small Business Advertisement: A Short Review. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 7(4), 786-790.