Email Marketing

I have heard of people scraping the web for people's personal email addresses, and then compiling them all into a list, before sending their advertisements to all of the email addresses.

Whilst I think that you may get one or two people who would be interested,I find this pretty ineffective, because the traffic is not targeted traffic to your niche.

But some people know how to get the email addresses of people who would be interested in their niche. But I am wondering if email marketing is still effective? Not a lot of people seem to be using this technique much anymore.

What are your thoughts?

 

I think it's best to stay away from spamming. I've never understood how it generates good traffic, let alone conversions. It's like someone knocking on your door just selling "whatever". I don't think too many people will so easily part with their money like that, if the point is to sell something.

 

Very true, but if the spammer has one of the new automated programs he can send out many thousands of emails at the same time.
They play the percentage game, if you contact enough people the odds are that you will score with a few.

Yahoo in Japan has recently been attacked and the hackers obtained 22 MILLION email addresses.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology...1/yahoo-japan-suspects-22-million-ids-stolen/

It is possible they will now be sold to spammers and scammers.

 

I don't think this is that effective because it will just be regarded as spam. Like for me, if I get these emails I wouldn't just register on them, I'd delete the message straight away.
Same with leaflets and posters sent to your house, you will rarely look at them and buy what they're advertising.
It will just be a waste of time and effort.

 

Hmmm...I'd say most people would consider this as spam. Sure, maybe a few people would sign up, but the rest would just forget about you forever because they wouldn't think you were credible/legit etc. I certainly wouldn't follow an email sent to me.

 

I wouldn't say that is a good idea. That's calld spamming and it is illegal in the most countries and could you arrested. However, if you feel safe enough and have some trusted proxies then it would work but email marketing is in my opinion quite irritating and most of the marketing mails are considered as spam by the email providers.

 

I actually am not sure if email marketing is still effective these days. Because people easily just can move your emails to them on their spam folder. I have not been convinced that email is still effective if you want to promote something. It just didn't work for me.

 

Email marketing is the most effective of all the channels from my own experience. I add the caveat that this works only if the list is targeted. If the list is created from a list scraped it's not a good idea, and as already mentioned probably breaking the spam laws. If the information you include is compelling, people will sign up or share it. One of the best emails for example is the Quora weekly newsletter. It has one the highest open rates and keeps driving traffic back to their site. If you give value or perceived value in the newsletter, people will subscribe.