E-Mail Plus Word-of-Mouth: A Marketing Revolution

• Posted: Friday, August 04, 2006
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• Author: pradhana

The possibilities are enough to make a marketer's mouth water.

The ubiquity of e-mail, among marketers and Internet users, has created a take-it-for-granted attitude that detracts from its actual power. But with 90% of Internet users — and over 55% of all Americans — e-mail unquestionably has access to an audience with critical mass, and it is increasingly becoming a primary delivery vehicle for word-of-mouth marketing.

The combination of e-mail and word-of-mouth affords marketers a potentially vast, and very powerful, new marketing tool.

"The fundamental purpose of e-mail marketing is to enhance a company's relationship with its customers and to draw in new prospects. That might mean direct response sales messages, CPG coupons, building brand awareness, weekly or monthly e-newsletters, service messages about packages shipped or funds available in bank accounts, driving traffic to a company or brand Web site and, increasingly, word-of-mouth communications," says David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, E-Mail & Word-of-Mouth: Connect with Your Best Customers. "

More and more marketers today are joining the conversation among consumers — another way to say word-of-mouth — through e-mail to blend in with marketing today's trend of consumer-generated content, such as blogs, social networks, video and related media."

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