More notes on the e-mail churn rate. NineCo. that produces the Gamesville.com site reported to DMNews that out of a database of 750K e-mail addresses, 7,500 users send in change of address notices each month. That's only about one percent a month or 12 percent a year. What's not known to MWT at this time is how many addresses are bad and never get updated. The figure on the street is a 40% churn rate for e-mail addresses. Tell us if you have any other figures....

Spamming to get spammers. Recently a rather large telemarketing and direct marketing company began to send me the names of people wanting to do e-mail marketing. Usually the requests were for target markets that have yet to develop decent sized e-mail databases. I called one lead up, a web entrepreneur working solo with a gourmet food site, and I discovered he'd been spammed by the telemarketing company about its e-mail marketing services.

My contact at the telemarketing company said his spam campaigns were within the bounds of the McKrinsky law which allows a business to send out a solicitation once to any company, regardless of the relationship between the two. As long as those who opt-off are dutifully deleted, he said, it's all fair game.

I asked to see the message he was sending out. It offered rates as low as $175 for a 100,000 name mailing.

I debated the spam issue with him. It meant nothing to him. McKrinsky was his savior. "Every time we send out 100,000 messages I get 175 leads. It's working for me," he said.

I shuddered at the thought of anyone with less than $200 in his pocket being able to reach thousands. And guess who's paying the freight? You and me, babe.

Can you make money online with response rates like these?? We interviewed an online store that e-mailed 75,000 names from rented opt-in e-mail lists about its special prices on camcorders. "The click through rate to the site was good," the marketing manager said. "In the 5 - 10% range. As far as sales go," he told MWT," it was better than normal."

"What is normal?" we asked him.

"Anything from .2 to .8 percent of those who clicked through," he answered.

Even at one percent (which would be a phenomenal response, he said) this company may have seen 75 new customers at most, purchase something at its site. If the mailing costs 20 cents a name, the online store needed each customer to spend more than $200 to cover the cost of the mailing.

"We learned a lot renting those opt-in lists. But it really was expensive," the marketing manager summed up. The company plans to develop its own database for future mailings.

E-commerce post Xmas is better than ever. Carl Pritzkat, founder of New York-basedMedialopis has seen e-mail to in-house lists perform well. His company built and manages the Web site for Windham Records, one of the earliest record companies to set up shop in cyberspace. At Xmas time, Pritzkat told MWT, Windham had seen a tripling of its revenues. But since then sales have gone up even more.

"I think people found going to the site a pleasurable experience and the level of service to be quite good." Windham had been sending out one e-mail a month to its house list announcing new releases. "We've increased that to every other week and added special promotions for Valentine's Day and Saint Patrick's day. There are contests to win prizes and new recordings."

Pritzkat sees an increase in consumer buying patterns. "Now a visitor that clicks through a link for a promotion stays and buys 2 or 3 more items.

"I think Windham's customers like the how we keep the site on brand. They don't have to wade through a lot of stuff. Customers don't want more choice, what they really want is the right choice."

Online banner ads with an interactive element see click-through rates increase by 70% a study by ASI Market Research and Grey Interactive found.