E-mail Called Fastest Growing Direct Marketing Tool

A new report from TechProse Inc. in New York says opt-in email is “outpacing telemarketing and traditional direct mail as the fastest growing form of business-to-business marketing,”

“We’re in the middle of a major marketing shift, one that will be more powerful than banner ads,” said Sarah Stambler, a veteran email marketer and author of the report, “BEYOND SPAM: E-mail Marketing That Works.”

“E-mail is the killer app on the ‘Net and will soon be the killer marketing channel,” she said.

Stambler’s report said that Forrester Research found more than 3 billion pieces of (opt-in) commercial email messages were sent in 1997 and the number of pieces sent will grow to 250 billion by 2002, creating a $1 billion market in just four years.

Omaha Steaks told DM News in its April 6, 1998 issue that one email campaign, managed by Acxiom/Direct Media, had a 5% click through rate on links embedded in the email message to www.omahasteaks.com, followed by a spike in sales. Eddie Bauer’s 10 campaigns to its house file of customers’ email addresses yielded typical click-through rates between 2% to 6%, the report says.

A recent National Geographic campaign received a 32% click-though rate and netted 23,000 new names., the report said. HTML mail, which looks like a Web page in recipient’s mailbox, gets even higher results.

Designed for businesses, publishers, and entrepreneurs, the report covers what other marketers are doing, how to build or rent opt-in lists, select list brokers and compose messages. Three major list brokers comment on the state of the industry and successful campaign tactics. A section on how to set up an e- mail newsletter walks readers through the basics.

Stambler is the editor and publisher of TechProse’s “Marketing With Technology News,” a fax and email newsletter.