An investment of less than $3,000 in an e-mail campaign is expected to generate about $100,000 in new revenue during the next year for a media monitoring and Web clipping service. About 15,000 public relations and marketing executives worldwide -- mainly in North America -- were targeted with three e-mail tests, followed by a rollout to 121,000 recipients. They were offered a 14-day free trial of the service that monitors more than 13,000 media outlets as well as Web message boards. The three test e-mails of 5,000 each were sent in the first, second and third weeks of June. The rollout went out over three weeks starting June 26. Monthly subscription income for July rose 22 percent from June. (DM News Sept 23, 2003)

http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=25059

IBM Corp. is using an interactive television-like e-mail for its ForwardView small and midsized business monthly newsletter to better engage opt-in subscribers. Called Showmail, the e-mail format by creator IQ Television Group delivers content in multimedia to IBM customers and prospects on IT stories relevant to their industry and interests. "The success of the Showmail trial evaluation has caused IBM to drop its HTML format in favor of the Showmail format as the exclusive vehicle for the ForwardView newsletter," said IQ president Tony Quin. Showmail solved a few problems for IBM, Quin said. It increased the number of stories and view time on ForwardView. And the number of new subscriptions also rose since the pilot began in June as prospects signed on and e-mails were forwarded. (DM News Sept 10, 2003)

http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=24956

In the concluding remarks of a September 23^rd article in MediaPost, "Pop-ups: Clickthroughs Outweigh Frustration,"

Pop-ad ads make up just 3.5% of all US online ads in Q4 2002, based on impressions, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' latest numbers. That number, however, is a near-doubling of the previous year's figure, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, which also says that publishers served 13.4 billion pop-up ads in Q1 2003 (not counting house ads), a 24% increase from the previous quarter.

Moreover, a study from Unicast and Dynamic Logic found that a whopping 78% think pop-up, pop-under, and floating ads are annoying. Further research sponsored by Overture found that when US Internet users could choose only one online advertising issue that most concerned them, 35% cited pop ups. And most alarmingly, pop-ups lead all ad forms in levels of annoyance and distrust-97% feel "furious" or "angry" with pop-up ads that appear without warning, reports PlanetFeedback.

Why are pop-ups still popping? In a word: clickthroughs. A recent survey by Advertising.com says clickthroughs on pop-ups are nearly 13% higher than on banners (conversions are 14% higher) and with numbers like that, advertisers are willing to annoy.

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