What Is Fax Marketing?

Fax marketing is a marketing strategy that businesses can use to promote and market a business. It involves sending promotional materials via fax machine, rather than by direct mail, email or some other form of marketing. Businesses that use fax marketing as part of their marketing techniques use what is known as a blast fax. It goes out to numerous fax numbers one right after the other. Typically, this requires fax software that allows the sender to input all of the fax numbers into the machine quickly and easily. Blasting the fax out is also automatic so it does not require someone to stand at the fax machine and input the new fax number and load the sheet every time.

Marketing with faxes has been around longer than email marketing and other forms of Internet marketing. As the invention of the Internet came into play and new forms of marketing came on the scene, fax marketing became less commonly used. Some of it had to do with the cost of sending faxes, especially in cases where the fax numbers are long distance.

Now, marketing experts say that fax marketing may actually set the business apart from the rest of the crowd. With email inboxes being inundated with promotional and marketing emails everyday and the mailbox getting flooded with marketing pieces, the fax machines in many businesses are neglected and empty when it comes to marketing items.

The thought process is that instead of creating an expensive direct mail piece and paying postage, a business may actually benefit from using fax marketing to reach its audience. Primarily, fax marketing techniques focus on business customers. For example, an office supplies company may send out coupons or sales announcements using fax marketing. Fax marketing does not tend to work as well with consumer marketing because many consumers do not have a fax machine in their home, while this is a common staple in a business.

Fax marketing can be used by businesses by faxing announcements and information to a list of existing fax numbers that the company maintains. Some companies sell lists of fax numbers for the specific types of customers that you are trying to target. In order to track the effectiveness of fax marketing, it is a good idea for businesses to include some kind of promotional code to collect if someone calls to access the detail or returns it via fax.