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

100 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
Although the Internet can be proven to enhance the traditional media
used in your lead generation programs, it is probably premature to
assume that e-mail can replace direct mail or telemarketing entirely. For
one thing, the Internet is not yet a precision medium for targeting. It has
not reached the level of maturity of direct mail in terms of your ability
to hone a prospect list by using key criteria to select exactly the right
individuals for a mailing program.
In addition, access to individual names and titles via the Internet is
problematic. As you will see in the following discussion of e-mail, prospecting
via the Internet presents a whole set of unique challenges to the
b-to-b marketer.
You must also consider the fact that Internet lead generation and
qualification is still in its youth as an acceptable marketing practice. Some
target audiences may be comfortable with it; others may not be. Generally,
those in IT and technical professions are fairly accepting of e-mail
and Internet marketing. Not all individuals in all areas of business are as
accepting. For example, marketing professionals tend to be more accepting
than financial professionals. With consumers, acceptance tends to
vary. Consumers who are active users of the Internet will obviously be
more accepting, but acceptance of the Internet as a means of self-qualification
will vary from prospect to prospect. Nevertheless, now is the time
to think about augmenting traditional lead generation media with e-mail.
As evidence of the increasing acceptance of marketing e-mail, consider
the results of a market research study released by IMT Strategies
in November 1999. The firm surveyed more than 400 consumer and
business e-mail users in the United States and looked at performance
data from 169 companies doing e-mail campaigns. Although 64% of
those surveyed had very negative perceptions of spam, more than half
of them felt positively about permission e-mail marketing, and three
quarters of them said they responded to permission e-mail frequently.
In fact, over 80% of these e-mail users had granted marketers to send
them e-mail promotions.
Integrating E-mail into Your Marketing Programs
One of the easiest ways to take advantage of the transition to Internet
direct marketing is to integrate e-mail into your existing direct market-