ARTICLE FROM FEBRUARY eNEWSLETTER

Long-term Dot-Com Marketing, Cost Effective E-Mail Surveys

Greetings,

As another bitterly cold day passes, the World Wide Web continues to heat up. We're going to deal with a couple of important issues in this issue that any business with a website could, and should, practice to improve its online presence. First, we'll address the importance of site surveys and site analysis in order to keep visitors returning. Second, we'll look at the after affects of the dot-com-mania, both good and bad.

SURVEYS SURVEYS SURVEYS

They are affordable and necessary. All marketing and advertising firms use them, why can't small businesses utilize them as well? The ability to receive comments from customers and visitors to a website is vitally important to a site's future. For instance, if one stays over night at a hotel she may receive a comment survey
card to 'better serve' her during her future stays. Much is the same with an online presence.

As the web changes daily, peoples' demands change and to be able to counter and collect from those changes relies on the ability to perceive the curve before it comes. Simple surveys dealing with services to navigational layouts, provides businesses with useful feedback. It is then up to you, the business, to consider changes and improvements.

In the "Golden Days", many surveys were through direct mail. With email, surveys are less expensive, yield a higher response rate, and minimizes time involved. The Wellness Center out of North Carolina opted for an email survey as opposed to direct mail or phone studies regarding an opening of a new facility and what it should incorporate. With expectations of a 10-15 percent response rate, they actually saw a whopping 47.4 percent response rate! The survey went out to over 800 people. The original bids for a direct mail piece of that size for their needs was around $3,000. Their email survey costs was well below $1,500, and $450 of that was for a three month e-mail marketing solutions subscription.

As one can see, email can be affordable and highly effective. Beyond the cost effectiveness of an email solution, is the immediacy of the survey results. The worries of surveys lingering around a desktop or in the mail somewhere are less likely to happen with direct email. If direct email marketing is something you would like to consider and would also like more information about please
contact iam@iampresentations.com

LONG TERM MARKETING!!!

It was nearly built in a day it seems. However, the internet is still in its integration phase. As that integration grows so does its potential and use. In the mid 1990s there was the dot-com boom, and then the crashing bang. Reason being: the dot-com-mania preached the short term, thus was initially shortsighted for
the "quick buck". For instance, online access penetrated U.S. households faster than t.v., radio, and even the telephone (Jupiter Research). Nearly seventy percent of the U.S. population were connected in ten years. The internet is still laying its foundation and the most useful marketing approach will be the long view
information-based, interactive collaboration with visitors as this unbound highway of connectivity molds its shape. The following is a basic trajectory of a long view system, of which we appear to be leaving the second phase and entering the third phase. We hope you enjoy this outline and find it useful. For further assistance or
any questions please contact iam@iampresentations.com.

1. Direct response advertising: The initial breakthrough enabled the consumer to respond, for example, redeeming a coupon, returning a postcard, or calling on the telephone. Because response is an effect, effectiveness of the stimulus can be measured, making the communications accountable.

2. Data-based targeting: In the 1970s, when computing power democratized from mainframes to desktops, data-based marketing became commercially feasible for many businesses. It was widely adopted because superior precision of delivering stimuli to specifically appropriate households or individuals increases
effectiveness.

3. Feedback-driven speed. Prior to the 1990s, only one medium was two-way and worked in real time: the telephone. The Internet added two more channels: e-mail and Web sites. Both have two-way capabilities (though very different) and both are near real time. Today, orchestrating sequences of data-governed and data-capturing
two-way interactions across these two-way channels in near real time is a leading edge.

4. Customer-guided marketing. End-using consumers have control of commercial messaging with personal video recorders, call blockers, anti-spam filters, and other tools. This could result in a culture of concealment in which consumers seek to hide from marketers. Alternately, it could open an era of negotiated messaging, such as
opt-in and opt-out, permissioned and double permissioned, filter- compliant addressing, cookie-setting prompts, and so on. The technology side involves machine-to-machine handshakes and data policies. The human side involves earning trust as a prerequisite to intimacy. This is today's planning horizon.

5. Company-customer co-evolution. Off in the distance is the informational vision of a tightly coupled company and its customers. Information wants to be exchanged. Tight coupling is the logic of all information systems in processes such as just-in-time inventory and build-to-order manufacturing and in markets for equities,
insurance, and so forth. Wired editor and author Kevin Kelly put it this way:

" ...Co-evolutionary relationships... are in their essence
informational. A steady exchange of information welds them into a
single system. At the same time, the exchange -- whether of insults
or assistance or plain news -- creates a commons from which
cooperation, self-organization, and win-win endgames can spawn..."

Best Regards,
I AM Presentations