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To Advertise Or Not: The Debate On Email Marketing Content

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Email marketing has, by no means, taken the corporate world by storm. It has been considered by many marketing professionals as one of the most effective Internet marketing strategies used by business entrepreneurs whether they own a brick-and-mortar business establishment or have set up an online business run from their own home office. This is because, unlike other Internet marketing strategies which are directed by the manner as to how a potential customer or client searches for a product or service over the Internet, email marketing allows the business organization to go directly to these potential customers and clients. This way, they are able to provide links to go to the website of their business without fearing that these potential customers and clients would be swayed by the promotions of other businesses offering the similar products and services.

The Debate

While email marketing is considered to be extremely effective, there have been many contradicting articles published over the Internet with regards to what content should be considered as proper email marketing materials. This is because of the fact that email marketing campaigns are also the most vulnerable to failure due to email service providers being more strict in weeding out which emails go to an account holder’s Inbox and which ones are sent to the spam folder where it would just be ignored and deleted.

One of the hottest debates is whether or not to use advertisements as part of the content material used in email marketing campaigns. Here are the two sides of the coin to give you the complete picture:

To Advertise…

Supporters of the move to encourage business entrepreneurs to put advertisements in their materials such as e-newsletters have pointed out the numerous benefits that it is able to provide during their email marketing campaign.

One of which is that by adding promotional and discount coupon offers in your e-newsletters, business entrepreneurs are not only able to get the attention of potential customers and clients more effectively in terms of availing the products and services found in your website. Customers and clients are able to help you further increase the volume of website traffic and the search engine ranking of your website by telling their friends and relatives about this. After all, who would not want to avail of a discount or a freebie or two?

Another benefit, supporters have stated, is that adding advertisements in the e-newsletters you use for your email marketing campaigns would allow you to conduct link exchange relationships with other businesses. Apart from merely posting your banner advertisement or link on the website of the company that you have struck a link exchange deal with, you can also sell this space to them. So even if you are not able to make a sale, the profits that you were expecting to receive from making a sale or two can be offset by ad space rental fees.

…or Not

On the other hand, those who are against using advertisements in materials used for email marketing campaigns have claimed that the presence of advertisements on an e-newsletter would greatly diminish the effect of the articles that are included in these e-newsletters. Many business entrepreneurs would use the high quality articles published in e-newsletters to educate potential customers and clients in order to convince them that they need the products and services that are offered in their business’ website and that the best place where to get these is through their website. By offering options in your e-newsletter as a result of link exchange agreements, you actually increase the risk of these potential customers and clients to check out similar online stores. This, then, completely defeats the entire purpose of why many business entrepreneurs do email marketing campaigns in the first place.

Another disadvantage to putting advertisements, according to skeptics, is that it also increases your email materials to be tagged as spam mail. Remember, it is not only the subject heading that can cause a particular email sent by an email marketing campaign to be tagged as a spam mail. File size and what is written inside the email would also cause your email marketing campaign materials to be tagged as spam mail as well.

The Verdict

Whether or not to use advertisements in your email marketing campaign materials is really up to you. There are a number of advantages and disadvantages on both sides. It is important to weigh these carefully before deciding on whether to include advertisement as part of the materials you would be sending out.