A number of elements make direct email marketing different from spam or other less sophisticated email campaigns. For example, the sender may use customer segmentation techniques to ensure that the message is appropriate for the group it's sent to, and use personalization techniques so the recipient is addressed as an individual.



In contrast to the bombardment approach of spam, the concept behind direct email marketing is that it makes more sense to send attractive, professional, and compelling ads to a smaller group of recipients that might actually be interested in receiving such messages. Direct email marketing is generally permission-based opt-in email, rather than unsolicited commercial email (UCE).

The answer is simple-they just don't know how to organize their bulk email marketing efforts into a cohesive and worthwhile direct bulk mailing. StreamSend gives you the experience, the know-how and the internet marketing tools to run a successful email marketing campaign or bulk mailing without the hassle and frustration of doing it yourself.

But as alarmist as the media is, the "rules" of email marketing are not changing so rapidly or capriciously. Email marketers have much more control over their campaigns than they think.

It does not matter whether you are running a small online business or a local eatery, your budget is limited and your challenge is to keep getting new customers for growth and turn your existing customers into repeat buyers for business sustainability. You can use a variety of advertising options depending on your budget. Email marketing is a low cost solution that you must use regardless of any other methods you pursue.

Marketers (and alas, spammers) have been attracted to email because of its extremely low costs-- generally, a fraction of a cent per recipient. But take heart: even if programs like Goodmail's doubled or tripled the cost per recipient, it's still far below the cost of just the postage for a direct mail campaign.

Direct email involves sending a promotional message in the form of an email. It might be an announcement of a special offer, for example. Just as you might have a list of customer or prospect postal addresses to send your promotions too, so you can collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses.

ISPs look to such policies to offset their spam filtering costs and to make their customers happy by reducing the amount of spam they receive. But their customers are also your customers. If your customers are unhappy because they don't receive your email, that means their customers are unhappy, too. It's in an ISP's interest to deliver email their customers want, or they'll abandon it for a service that does.

Want to Profit from Email Marketing? Tip #1: Address Recipients with Their Name in Email Campaigns Make your newsletter recipients feel more like themselves, less like mere numbers by greeting them individually and personally. This will show them you didn't just SPAM out 1,000,000 emails to whoever was available.

Like certification, email authentication promises to make it easier for ISPs to distinguish spam from legitimate email. But no single protocol has been universally adopted; not even 800 pound gorillas like AOL, Yahoo or MSN have been able to strong-arm the entire internet community into using their preferred protocol. Slowly, senders have been adopting these protocols, but compliance is spotty at best-- except, reportedly, by spammers.

Email marketing is a very successful form of marketing but it has changed shape in the past decade. It used to be the wild west. Everything and anything would go. These days it is a much different game. There are spam laws in place and even people being convicted for sending unsolicited email.