Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

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Generating and Qualifying Leads with E-mail 97
Generating and Qualifying
Leads with E-mail
For many b-to-b companies, e-mail has become the primary form of
Internet marketing, but it hasn’t always been so. Early on, e-mail received
much negative attention because of spam—e-mail not requested
by the recipient.
Unsolicited e-mail had become such an annoyance by late 1999 that
numerous states had already enacted antispam legislation. During that
year, however, the concept of permission marketing launched e-mail’s
rebirth, driven in part by the best-selling book of the same name by Seth
Godin. The idea struck a chord with marketers everywhere, and it held
special relevance to Internet marketers. Permission marketing is, basically,
sending e-mail only to those people who give the marketer permission
to send it. Such permission is granted when a prospect or
customer subscribes to a newsletter mailing list or answers a specific
question in the affirmative—for example, “May we communicate with
you via e-mail?” It is recommended that the individual be periodically
requalified.
This is the manner in which companies have now built their own
substantial e-mailing lists. Even so, the controversy over e-mail has continued,
largely due to the growing availability of “opt-in” e-mail lists.
The question is whether or not these lists are truly opt-in, legitimately
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