The Growing Effectiveness of E-mail Marketing - Literature review Example

The paper "The Growing Effectiveness of E-mail Marketing" is an outstanding example of a marketing literature review. Direct marketing is creating direct contact with an existing or potential new customer directly. The primary concern of direct marketing is the behaviour of the customer and is usually integrated with other communications tools to entice the consumer. For example whilst advertising aims to develop the value of a brand, direct marketing aims to engage and drive a behavioural call-to-action message which can be an advertising one (Fill,2006)The main differential for successful directed marketing is the database (REF).

A fully updated database can be an effective tool for targeting and segmenting the audience to aim the right message to the right consumer at the right time.A primary form of direct marketing is email marketing.Email marketing is directly communicating your email to a group of new or existing consumers through an email. Email marketing is being increasingly recognised as a cost-effective marketing tool (REF). Forrester (Niall 2000) describes email marketing as one of the most effective online marketing tools, and according to Pew Internet (Pew, 2010), around 94% of adults use email.

Studies done by The Radicati Group, Inc. (Radicati, 2010) suggested in 2011 that “the number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase from an installed base [active accounts, which have been accessed at least once within the last three months] of 3.1 billion in 2011 to nearly 4.1 billion by year-end 2015. This represents an average annual growth rate of 7% over the next four years.”The advantages of email marketing have been recognised by a number of authors. Jackson and DeCormier (1999) recognised that email provides marketers with communication that permits relationship building and real-time interaction with customers.

For many firms, email marketing is being used to communicate upcoming events, new business developments, new product and service announcements such as promotions, but most importantly to generate and drive sales (REF).