Welcome to the long anticipated final installment of our Types of Email Marketing series. Today we're going to talk  about Personal Relationship Emails, a powerful form of email marketing that isn't used as often as it should be.

Personal Relationship Emails

These are a bit different than the other forms of email newsletters we've discussed, as they are created to send a personalized message to a specific recipient when a set of requirements are met. For example, let's take a high end restaurant. Mr. Smith has taken his wife to dinner as part of an evening out, and they had a pleasant experience. While signing the bill, he notices there's a field asking for his email address and he decides to fill it out. Mr. and Mrs. Smith go home and forget about the great experience they had and move on with their lives. However, 48 hours later an email lands in Mr. Smith's inbox from the restaurant. To him, it reads as if someone has taken the time to send him an email personally:

Dear Mr. Smith,

We wanted to send you a quick note thanking you for having dinner at our fine establishment the other night. We trust your experience was enjoyable. If there were any concerns that were not met during your meal, please feel free to contact me directly (my contact information is below) and I will do my best to help you out.

As a token of our appreciation, please accept this 15% off coupon (alcoholic beverages excluded) for your next visit to our fine establishment, and we hope you will keep us in mind the next time you decide to go out for dinner.

Sincerely, Jim Johnson Manager

Consider the impression that this will have on the average consumer. Not only will Mr. Smith be impressed by the fact that the restaurant took the time to send him an email about his experience directly, but there is a good chance he will make plans to have dinner there again within the month to take advantage of the 15% discount he's been offered. Now writing an email to every single patron may seem like a significant amount of time invested, but the beauty of this type of email marketing is it can be mostly automated. With the entry of a few pieces of information, the system can automatically generate this email and keep emailing Mr. Smith every 6 months with a new offer to make sure he doesn't forget to go out for dinner at his favorite restaurant.

Hopefully our outline of some of the major types of email communication you can send from an email marketing campaign will be helpful for your business as you branch out into email marketing, and be sure you don't miss our future posts on this topic that will help you grow your business through the power of the Internet!