Email marketing has become an established and popular way for UK businesses to market to their prospects due to its relatively low cost, high conversion rates and the opportunity it gives them to stay in touch with existing and previous customers.

The ongoing recession has forced many businesses to cut back on their marketing spend, or at least look more closely at their return on investment.  Even in these tough economic times email marketing has remained popular with UK businesses as it is cost-effective, flexible and the results can be easily measured.

Email marketing costs a mere fraction of traditional direct mail however it is important that it is done correctly. With the ever increasing use by business of the internet, better connectivity speeds, increasing use of social media and the dawn of Web 3.0 and mobile internet access your customers and prospects have a wealth of information quite literally at their fingertips and your email message has to compete with all this other information.  It is vital therefore that your email marketing message is relevant and personalised to your targets.

Email marketing has suffered a poor reputation in the past due to ‘spam’ and untargeted email marketing.  To make sure your email marketing messages are not ‘blacklisted’ or deleted before they are read it is important to ensure that the title and content is of interest to the person receiving it.

Businesses need to focus on the needs of their customers otherwise their email marketing efforts will be wasted.  Use a professional email marketing company like WSI IMS to help you plan and implement your email marketing campaigns or at least use a good dedicated email marketing software program, such as WSI’s Digital Marketing Pro.

Going forward many exciting possibilities with email marketing will be offered by the social networks.   The social inbox, for example, will provide an integrated view of your emails and your other online communication channels. New applications currently in development will help people to share emails ‘virally’ with their social networking friends.

Tomorrow we will share with you 5 email marketing tips to help you plan your successful email marketing campaigns in 2011.

If you would like to learn more about email marketing please leave a comment or visit WSI IMS – WSI Internet Marketing Services for UK Businesses.