Is e-mail marketing still in a nascent stage in India?

Bangalore: While recession has forced many firms to cut back on their marketing initiatives, they are quickly realizing that effective email marketing is the best way to reach out to their customers and prospects. The comparatively low cost, high ROI and focus on customer retention has gradually resulted in making e-mail marketing a crucial element to all successful firms in the market today. But what is the state of e-mail marketing in India?

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According to Sprinklr, a fast growing Indian digital marketing services firm, e-mail marketing is rated as the world's most popular and most widely used application on the Internet and is now by far the leading means of business communication. In fact the report states that online marketing will double by 16 billion pounds in 2012. But can the same be said of India, where e-mail marketing has not picked up to a great extent? In fact, as Saurav Patnaik, Founder and Vice President of Sprinklr puts it, "The email marketing scene in India today is at the same level as it was in the U.S. a decade ago."

Sprinklr India was incepted in early 2009, and its e-mail marketing solutions support database integration, segmentation and other techniques that improve the targeting of its messages. "This and the provision of separate/integrated views and controls make Sprinklr the ideal bulk e-mail solution for marketers to generate sales, inquiries, downloads and registration, besides awareness creation," says Patnaik. Clients of Sprinklr today include Arvind Mills' Megamart, Indian Express group, Asianet, Urja Communications, NDTV Goodtimes, Journeymart and others.

However, although there is a huge opportunity for this segment to grow in the Indian market, there are a number of challenges that e-mail marketing faces in the country. First and foremost, most clients are apprehensive of this form of marketing for the fear of being labeled as spam. Most people are flooded with spam mails every other day, and marketers would not want to be seen to be taking the spam route in order to achieve profits. This is probably one of the reasons why brand marketers prefer to forego the increased ROI for a safer marketing route. So, although Indians might be one of the largest Internet users in the world, and there might be a huge untapped market for e-mail marketing to cover in this country, the big challenge for e-mail marketing firms here is to deal with the apprehension among Indian CIOs to opt for this system.

According to Patnaik, a prime concern among Indian CIOs is security. Since the system involves data transfer to a third party, most of them are cautious before they opt for it. "Sprinklr is the only player in the Indian market that offers SAS 70 security standard, which secures the system to such an extent that even if the user ID and password is compromised, no data can be copied from the system," says Patnaik. Today, when the threat of being maimed as a spammer looms large, companies like Sprinklr are determined to wipe away such threats and bring e-mail marketing to a full swing in the country, where brand matters a lot.