There are three main types of email marketing. Two of them involve building your own in-house list or renting. The other one allows you to tap into other people’s resources by buying advertising spots.

In this blog post, we are going to highlight the differences between the two types of email marketing: promotional direct email and email newsletter. Although both of them are acquired through building your list one name at a time, there are basic differences that all marketers should be aware of.

Confusing the two could possibly mean building a wrong and untargeted list. It usually follows by a plunge in open rate, response and high unsubscribe rates.

Following are characteristics of both email marketing pieces:

1. Promotional direct email

The last time you bought a product from a company, you were prompted with an option to “also send me periodic mailings on related products and offers.”

The company in question was trying to build its in-house list to send promotions and offers.

Subscribing to such list, you are explicitly interested in knowing special offers of related products. You are likely to buy again in the future. You expect to receive notifications about promotions and immediately act upon it if you want more of such products.

The sender of such emails usually create the promotional pieces in such a way that they are persuasive to the recipients. They encourage readers to response as soon as possible, within a short time frame.

2. Email newsletter email

Contrary to the first type of email marketing, email newsletter or ezine concentrates on building long-term relationships with readers.

Email marketers usually use this medium to build trust and loyalty. Sending regular electronic newsletter allows you to establish yourself as an expert and authority in the topic you are publishing.

Users who sign up for this type of email expect things differently. They want information. Instead of hard selling, you do soft selling. You educate readers about problems and offer solutions. Instead of offering immediate rebate to encourage sales, you offer a useful review of the product so the readers could help themselves in buying decision.

Of course, in email newsletter, you also need to provide a call-to-action, but through an entirely different methods compared to promotional emails.

It all comes back to expectation.

If you promise subscribers email newsletters, they are expecting information and perhaps some kind of promotions once in a while. If they sign up for special offers, they expect to response immediately to a brief promotional offer.

Give exactly what they expect, and you are likely to see high responsiveness.

In cases when people claim that email marketing doesn’t work, it is more often because they fail to offer the right kind of content to their subscribers.

Of course, there are other factors in the equation, but meeting the right expectation is such an important but often overlooked variable that could save your email marketing efforts.