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

166 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
receiving a telemarketing call. The e-mail newsletter is likely to receive
more attention and get read more often than traditional direct mail.
As discussed in Chapter 4, the e-mail newsletter is in itself becoming
a primary means of generating leads for b-to-b marketers. In the context
of e-fulfillment, it is a remarkably efficient medium. Consider the
fact that much of what you may now send in traditional printed form
could be converted to e-mail newsletter format. It may not have the
same appearance—today’s e-mail is predominantly raw text with no
bold, underlining, bullets, or graphic images—but that is rapidly changing.
E-mail programs are catching up, and it may not be long before
they routinely incorporate HTML-like graphics. In addition, e-mail newsletters
often have links to HTML pages so that recipients can click to a
page on the Web with a more pleasing graphic design and photographs
and illustrations.
Even with the basic e-mail newsletter, you have an opportunity to
translate marketing material into a format that is widely accepted and
read. As long as the e-mail newsletter has information of perceived value
and is not merely a sales pitch, prospects and customers alike will read
it. Just as important, you can rapidly build an e-mail list of subscribers
who, at the very least, share the commonality of being interested in
your e-mail newsletter topic. Sending your e-mail newsletter periodically
not only gets your message to a target audience more than once, it
also positions you as an expert. And e-mail newsletters are very inexpensive.
After you automate the e-mail process, the cost associated with
e-mail distribution is almost insignificant. Compare that to traditional
direct mail fulfillment.
The reader service number itself is undergoing change in the era of
the Internet. Now several trade magazine publishers are providing
Internet-based reader service numbers so that inquirers can respond
online. Some of these services allow an advertiser to post electronic
information at a special Web address, with a link to the advertiser’s
Web site. As a result, the inquiry can literally be instantly fulfilled instead
of taking days, weeks, or months, as might be the case with the
traditional bingo card inquiry handling process.
Dell Computer (www.dell.com) created an Internet version of the
reader service number that it calls an E-Value Code. Although Dell builds
computer systems to individual specifications, they also know that certain
preconfigured systems will be popular. Dell runs print ads showing
an E-Value Code with each of these systems. The interested prospect
goes to the Dell Web site and enters the E-Value Code in the appropriate