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Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to a targeted audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. There are a number of advantages to email marketing – compared to other marketing investments such as direct mail or printed newsletters, it is less expensive. and the return on investment can be high when done properly.

Whether you choose to do your marketing online or offline, one thing does not change. This is the concept that no single marketing strategy will be as effective as a combination of two or more marketing strategies. This does not mean it is necessary for you to implement every known marketing strategy to promote your business but rather it implies that it is worthwhile to market from a few different perspectives to help you achieve your business related goals. This article will examine the importance of combining email marketing with other types of marketing to create a successful; multi tiered marketing strategy and will also offer some advice on managing more than one marketing strategy at once.

As the old saying goes, “Two heads are better than one,” and this is certainly true when it comes to marketing. You may enjoy a great deal of success with email marketing but this does not mean you should not try other types of online marketing such as website creation, participation in industry related message boards, placing banner ads, orchestrating an affiliate marketing campaign and generating inbound links to your website. While it is possible that not all of these strategies will be effective for your business, you are likely to find at least one other option which complements your email marketing and helps you to achieve your business related goals.

Alternately you may even wish to combine your email marketing campaign with more traditional marketing strategies such as radio ads, television ads and the print media. Just because these types of advertising do not take place online, does not mean they will not be able to help you generate more business. In fact advertising both online and offline can allow you to reach a larger target audience. This is because you will likely reach Internet users around the world but can also reach potential customers who do not utilize the Internet for purchasing or researching products or services similar to the ones you offer.

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Make sure you’re not blacklisted!

Companies considering an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States’ CAN-SPAM Act, the European Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 or their Internet provider’s acceptable use policy. Even if a company follows the law, if Internet mail administrators find that it is sending spam it is likely to be listed in blacklists such as SPEWS.

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Popular marketing strategies to combine with email marketing include banner ads and message board participation. These are all online activities and each one individually is fairly simple. However, in combination these simple activities can create a powerful statement. You may send out emails offering useful information about your products or services, purchase banner ad space on websites which may be of interest to your potential customers and participate in industry related message boards where you can earn the respect and pique the interest of potential customers. Even if your potential customers are not currently in need of the products and services you offer, seeing your business name so often can have a branding effect. Branding is essentially a process in which consumers see a company name so often that they are more likely to select a product from this company when they are in need of an item the company offers.

If you are planning to combine multiple forms of advertising, you should be aware that this can make it difficult for you to evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing strategy. This is especially true of the marketing strategies are implemented concurrently. When you are only using one type of marketing strategy, you can generally attribute increases in sales or website traffic to changes in the marketing strategy. However, when more than one type of marketing strategy is in effect, determining which strategy is producing the desired effect can be quite difficult. This situation can be handled by not making changes to more than one marketing strategy at a time. This will help to pinpoint which changes produce an increase in sales or website traffic. It can also help you to determine when changes to your marketing strategy have a detrimental effect on your sales and website traffic. However, if you are having difficulty determining which marketing strategy is most effective you can consider asking customers to answer survey questions and provide information such as how they learned about the products or services your business offers.

About the Author

Michael Saunders has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He edits a site on Email Marketing and Web Hosting Services and maintains the Internet Marketing Waht site.