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

102 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
Outbound E-mail
If you follow the rules of outbound e-mailing, this aspect of Internet
marketing can have a substantial positive impact on your existing lead
generation and qualification program, but there are rules. E-mail began
as the primary method for one-to-one electronic communication—similar
to a personal, private letter—but there are some distinct differences:
E-mail is delivered directly to a user’s mailbox. It contributes to
“filling” that mailbox and always stays there, unless it is deleted
or opened by the recipient. In that respect, it is more intrusive
than direct mail, which can be easily discarded.
E-mail costs the end user money. If the end user is an individual
subscriber to an online service or buys Internet access from an
ISP, e-mail is one of the items he or she buys. (More and more,
e-mail is bundled in as a free service from ISPs, Web search engines,
and other Internet services. However, the end user often
has to pay for Internet access.)
If the end user is at a business e-mail address, the business is
“paying” for the e-mail address as part of its Internet access. Unlike
the receipt of direct mail, which is free to the end user, the receipt
of e-mail therefore has a cost associated with it.
E-mail was not designed for unsolicited promotions. E-mail was
first intended to be an electronic communications vehicle, not a
marketing vehicle. You could say the same thing about early direct
mail, but it took decades before direct mail became an accepted
form of advertising.
Today, unsolicited e-mail already has a poor reputation.
Known as spamming, it can create nothing short of fury on the
part of recipients. In fact, some recipients of unsolicited e-mail
have been known to give spammers a taste of their own medicine
by overloading senders with countless e-mail replies. A word of
caution: If you choose to use unsolicited e-mail to promote something
to someone, you should be aware that not all recipients will
be favorably predisposed to the practice. If in doubt, do not do it.
In some states unsolicited e-mail is illegal.