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EMAIL PROMOTION
Email is the commonest Internet application, used by 62% of UK businesses, and showing a rapid rise in uptake for small businesses - increasing by 24% in the last quarter according to Oftel's September 2000 survey (40). This level of penetration is likely to accelerate adoption of email by the rest of the population, in accordance with Metcalfe's law (the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users).

Email is a very attractive medium for promotional use - it is very cheap, and can be used for 'one to many' or 'one to one' communication. As Bloor (5) has noted, email is a prime example of a 'publish - subscribe' communication, intermediate between the 'pull' and 'push' models of distribution. The publish - subscribe mechanism confers a degree of choice on the subscriber who can decide whether to receive future correspondence or not, and whether to participate (reply or take some action, such as visit a web site) or not.

Email promotion must be handled with care, to ensure the target audience is not abused with unsolicited or irrelevant material (or too much or too frequently), resulting in the opposite of the desired effect - negative promotion. People's tolerance for junk email, or spam, is much lower than for junk printed mail. Email is perceived as more intrusive and personal than mail through the letterbox.

WebCMO (51) found unsolicited email to be the least effective promotional method, while solicited email, as confirmed by the Business survey here can be among the most effective. Email lists sold for mass marketing purposes, consisting of addresses that have not 'opted in' for future mailings, should never be used.

Email can be used in three main ways for promotional purposes:

advertising space purchased in another organisation's newsletter
purchase email lists of targeted people who have 'opted in' to receive further information on particular topics
email sent to a company's existing customer or prospect base, who have agreed to this.

Newsletters can be highly targeted, and visibility on well known and highly circulated publications, such as The Standard (M23) - a technology and business news sheet - can be obtained either through sponsorship, or by buying ad space. Advertising is mainly text only, but is likely to develop into more graphically oriented ads as broadband access becomes more prevalent. The concept of 'permission marketing' has taken hold amongst online marketers as an ethical and effective means of communication, which relies on people giving their permission (i.e. subscribing) to receive specified information. It is up to the publisher to ensure that the information they send is appropriate and of interest to the reader, as the reader should have the right to unsubscribe at any time.

Seth Godin of Yoyodyne Entertainment, specialising in online marketing, says their promotional campaigns often exceed 30% response rates and ascribes this to their permission marketing model - far in excess of the normal 2% rates for traditional direct mail (as reported by Bloor - 5). Perhaps the ultimate goal of online communication and promotion, is true personalisation - i.e. effectively corresponding one to one, but doing so on a mass distribution basis, managed automatically through a database driven system, and integrated with a CRM (customer Relationship Management) system.

Email is an ideal mechanism to achieve this, but relies on the careful collection and profiling of information from a number of sources, including the 'click-stream' of web visits. This is dealt with in some detail by Kimball and Merz (31), and is clearly a technology that has very significant commercial potential. There is plenty of scope in the future for creative and technological developments to boost the promotional power of email even further.