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I've heard too many speakers at conferences pitch the glories of e-mail
marketing. I've worked on campaigns with direct marketers eager to test
this new instant "low-cost" medium who found, to their
disappointment, the cost of acquisition could go beyond fifty dollars a
name.
The spiraling growth of spam and our inability to effectively
legislate it out of existence only secure the denigration of e-mail's long
term viability. We've been through the dot.com gold rush and bust. Get
ready for e-mail to implode.
If we're counting on e-mail marketing to be the killer marketing app we
are simply shooting ourselves in the foot. E-mail is the killer
communications app but with e-mail boxes stuffed to the brim with
legitimate communications together with spam, we all should have serious
doubts that e-mail., as we know it today, will prove to be a long term
viable channel for acquisition marketing. It works better for customer
retention purposes - but for how long? A June 19th article in the Wall
Street Journal cited Brightmail Inc.'s findings of more than a
four-fold increase in spam from 930,546 spam attacks in May, 2001 to 4.7
million this past May.
"People will tell you e-mail has become the biggest burden in
their online lives. There's a real frustration level there," said
Jeffrey Cole, a UCLA professor who oversees a long-term study looking at
the Internet's effects on society.
How do you turn a burden into a benefit?
Top
THE
SOLUTION:
Find An Addictive Platform
To help my clients think outside
the direct e-mail marketing box, I've turned to other venues on the Web. It
isn't worth renting third party lists at the high prices some are demanding
to get only one crack at contacting these names. It can be more effective to
gather names through a co-registration process that includes a lot of
branding. With the large numbers of names generated from co-registration,
you can zero in on your customers through creative follow-up programs. With
this method, the e-mails you send to these lists are ones they've asked for.
Right now the weather has become my best prospecting
channel. I've found a few applications where users download a weather
program that, when installed, creates a streaming media channel. The local
temperature is displayed on the tool bar and includes advertising when the
app is fully exploded on the screen. Weather info is irresistible with
people constantly checking on forecasts and travel conditions. Most
users keep this program on their computers for years. They can't do
without it.
The population interested in the weather cuts across all
market sectors. The user base has something in it for every marketer. Names
collected this way can cost as little as fifty cents a name. It took less
than a month to pull in over 35,000 new names for one online publisher.
Please contact me to
find out if this name gathering technique can enhance your e-marketing
efforts.
Top
Portals
are Hot......
The market for enterprise portal
platforms will reach more than $3.1 billion by 2006, according to tech
researcher IDC. The portal market IDC estimates to be at about $550 million
in 2001, but expects it to soar as enterprises purchase platforms to unify
their internal data and applications. Even as IT spending continues to lag,
enterprise portals have emerged as one of the few new e-business projects to
continue to garner investment attention. IDC said enterprise portals are
being deployed to enhance internal collaboration and provide better access
to transaction-based business processes. They also provide a common view to
a wide array of corporate activities, ranging from sales and marketing to
research and development and executive management.
Top
Decision
makers more interested in offline ads
A new survey indicates that top
decision makers are more likely to read an advertisement in an offline
business publication than on the Internet. In a study commissioned by the
Periodical Publishers Association (PPAi), around 83 percent of business
decision makers said they would rather read an ad in a publication. Nearly
79 percent of respondents also said that they find it much easier to read
printed articles than ones available online. However, the study reveals that
79 percent of business decision makers believe that the Internet and
business publications complement each other. Just 10 percent of respondents
said they thought the Net takes away the need for offline business
publications.
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Clickthrough
Rates On Online Ads Increase 35%: Doubleclick
The click-through rate on ads
online has increased from 0.6% to 0.8% over the past year, said DoubleClick
Inc. in its quarterly Ad Serving Trend Report. The report examined the
period from May 2001 to May 2002. This increase of almost 35% has occurred
even as the number of impressions DoubleClick has served has held steady.
The online advertising company served 56 billion ads in May 2001 and 55
billion in May 2002. Click-through rates on rich media ads are six times
higher than non-rich media ads. The click-through rate is one of the
measures used to determine the effectiveness of online advertising,
DoubleClick said, in a statement.
On average 20% of the two billion ads that DoubleClick
serves on a daily basis, are rich media.
Top
Worthwhile
Comment About E-Mail Appending
Seth Godin told the attendees at
a recent AIM Dinner & A Deal, "It's up to the consumer to determine
whether it's spam. E-mail appending is where a direct marketing company
matches its house file of postal addresses to a database of e-mail
addresses.
"If the person who gets the
mail thinks you spammed them, you did," Godin said. "You have to
ask yourself: Did you build brand equity, or did you build brand rage?"
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Affluent
shoppers to boost Web sales
The latest e-commerce
projections from Jupiter Research say households earning less than $75,000 a
year will be adopting the Internet faster than any other group during the
next four years. Wealthier consumers will be spending more money online than
any other group. Jupiter says a group called the "mass affluents"
which is families making more than $75,000 a year will be a fourth of
the US online population and these online shoppers gravitate towards travel
and financial services sites.
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News
Usage May Be Flat, but Local News Sites Are Hot ---
US
Not Necessarily Online for News
A Pew Research report determined
that the number of US adults going online grew from 54% of the population in
2000 to 62% in 2002. However, the study notes that the percentage of those
going online specifically for news remained relatively flat, growing from
33% in 2000 to just 35% in 2002. In fact, 73% of respondents said the
internet is not affecting their usage of other media. The Pew report is
based on interviews with 3,002 US adults ages 18 and older conducted by
Princeton Survey Research between 26 April and 12 May 2002.
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Local
News Web Sites Attract Consumers More Than National News Sites
Advertisers take note: Americans
are turning to their local news Web sites for purchasing inspiration. While
national news sites such as MSNBC.com and CNN.com excel at attracting
readers, consumers who want to shop are looking closer to home by visiting
local newspaper Web sites, says the NFO//Consumer.choice survey conducted by
NFO WorldGroup. The survey found that a higher percentage of consumers made
purchases either on-line or at brick and mortar stores after visiting local
news Web sites, compared to national news Web sites.
Top
Latest
Webby Award Winners
Take a peek at the winners -
here are the sites
http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html
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