Opinions on email marketing

[LJGirl]

Hi, everyone. I'm kind of new to this, so I thought I'd hunt around to see if anyone else has tried email marketing yet. I found a company called murgent and I'm probably going to sign up with them but I wanted to get some other thoughts. Has anyone heard of murgent? Has anyone even tried email marketing? How did it work?

I own a small boutique and I have a lot of regular customers, so I wanted to start sending a newsletter. Any thoughts would be great. Thanks in advance!

[Silver]

Email marketing?

It depends entirely what you mean by that term. If you mean emailing information to people who have pro-actively given their consent to receive such information, no problem. This would typically include newsletters and the likes.

If you mean unsolicited emails (spam), no way... don't even think about it. And if you do, hopefully, you will caught and suffer the conseqences.

There's a massive difference between the two. Hopefully you are thinking about the first, in which case, with a bit of luck, someone will be able to assist you. You will have to be very careful though, because most people are totally sick of spam and the term you use above could easily be interpreted in that way.

[Eagle]

True...spam just gets binned and not read.

Best to offer a sign-up option for news letters.

[RapideStore]

As a major online media purchaser, please beware with email marketing. There is only a handful of legit email marketers in the industry - and the price reflects this.

If done incorrectly, your site can be shut down and service cancelled. I can stir you in the right direction or better safer options if you are on a limited budget

[bvwh]

If (and it is a big if) you are getting your existing clients to give you their email address then go ahead, send out coupons, discounts, special offers etc

But mass spamming (gasp) will not win you any friends!
Simon

[LJGirl]

I collect emails from my own customers for this. I am already well aware of the trouble that spamming could cause. murgent doesn't let you use a purchased or rented list, and it's not like they are doing you marketing for you. You do it all yourself, it's just a way to schedule it and design better emails than I would be able to design with my own email server. So I guess I should re-phrase my question. Has anyone out there had experience with "permission-based" email marketing? How has that worked out?

[Doryen]

Actually, spam gets binned by most of us but some people read it and buy. I read some articles about guys making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by spamming. Geez! I should quit my day job! But seriously, if it didn't work, why is there so many of them?

[Silver]

>> if it didn't work, why is there so many of them <<

Because it's a desperate knee jerk effort by lazy people who can't work out honorable and sustainable strategies.

Believe me, I and others are spending greater and greater amounts of time hunting them down. At the very least to get their sites shut down, but in some cases, to face the legal consequences (well done Microsoft for once). The latter will increase as case law emerges, and I hope more and more of them can be thrown onto the streets, where they belong.

Spam isn't an option.

[Eagle]

Let's double our efforts - make it a criminal offence to respond to spam email too!

[Maureen]

i use *****.com for email marketing and i really like it a lot. doesn't cost much and its pretty easy.


[Moderator: No dropping URL's please]