F o u r t h E d i t i o n

Profit from Proven Business-to-Business Techniques!

Business-

Business-to-Business Internet Marketing

This book shows you how to effectively apply proven direct
This book will help you:
marketing principles to the new world of Business-to-
• Get your share of the multi-
Business Internet marketing—today’s fastest growing seg-
billion dollars in direct sales

to-Business
ment of online commerce. This practical yet forward-think- conducted online
ing blueprint for success is packed with examples and real-
• Increase your profits
world advice. You’ll learn—step by step—seven proven strate- through better lead genera-
gies for increasing profits by direct marketing to businesses tion/qualification

Internet
over the Internet. This new Fourth Edition has been updated • Avoid costly false starts and
with the latest case studies, Web site references, Internet use wasted time

statistics, and other developments in the online business-to- • Learn from others who are
business world. Included with the book is your personal succeeding online

Marketing
password necessary for accessing the companion Web site • Stay current with the
latest trends through the
which provides up-to-the-minute Internet marketing news,
“members only” companion
expanded information, and other helpful online marketing Web site
resources. This book/Web site combination is unbeatable!

About the Author

Barry Silverstein is CEO of Directech|eMerge—an award-winning, multimillion dollar, business-to-business direct and e-marketing agency
based in Burlington, Massachusetts. Barry has twenty-five years of marketing communications and direct marketing experience holding
previous positions at Xerox Corporation and Epsilon, a database marketing firm. He founded Directech|eMerge in 1983 and was voted
“New England Direct Marketer of the Year in 1992.” He resides in Acton, Massachusetts. Seven Proven Strategies
for Increasing Profits
“…step-by-step, battle-proven advice on how to use
the Internet to sell to business…” through Internet Direct
—Arthur Andersen's Knowledgespace.com
Marketing
“If you are going to read only one book about Internet
marketing this year, read this one.” Fourth
Edition “This is by far the best book on
—Mike Bayer, Compuserve

Internet Marketing yet.”

Silverstein
$34.95 US ($52.95 Canada)
— Database Marketing Institute
BUSINESS/INTERNET
Distributed by Independent Publishers Group (IPG)

605 Silverthorn Road,

Gulf Breeze, FL 32561
(850) 934-0819
www.maxpress.com
Barry Silverstein
bs-Intro.PMD 26 11/1/2001, 8:43 AM
 The Age of the “e” 1

1
The Age of the “e”

T his is the Age of the “e”; e-marketing is the new term for marketing;
eCRM is the latest positioning for Customer Relationship Management;
e-commerce is an integral part of selling for most b-to-b companies.
Today, organizations are either e-enabled or moving toward becoming
e-businesses.
Although some of us have had enough, we must acknowledge that
the “e” is representative of the influence of the Internet on business,
our lives, and our world. Even as we assimilate the Dot-Com Crash of
2000–2001, we can be sure that the Internet’s impact is long term and
sustainable.
Before we delve into specific strategies, we need to examine the
marketplace, so Chapter 1 sets the stage for the rest of this book. Here
we look at some important statistics, consider the Internet’s role in the
b-to-b world, and explore the growing importance of the Internet as a
gateway to global marketing.

The Numbers Game

In this chapter and throughout the book, you will see statistics regard-
ing Internet usage, e-business, and b-to-b e-commerce. The numbers are

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 2 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

changing so quickly they will be out of date by the time you read this
sentence. Rely on such Web sources as eMarketer (www.emarketer.com),
CyberAtlas (www.cyberatlas.internet.com), and Statmarket
(www.statmarket.com) to gain access to the latest statistics.
Just to put things into perspective, let us examine a few of the more
significant facts. By year-end 2000, according to CyberAtlas, there were
about 136 million Internet users in the United States, 27 million in Ja-
pan, 19 million in Germany, and 18 million in the United Kingdom.
eMarketer’s 2001 eLatin America Report indicated that the number of
Internet users in Latin America will reach close to 41 million by 2004,
up from over 15 million in 2000.
Canadian research firm Ipsos-Reid (www.angusreid.com) says that
in 2000, there were about 350 million adults worldwide using the Internet
by year’s end. The firm reported that Canada and Sweden actually led
the United States in terms of percentage of the population using the
Internet.
According to International Data Corporation (www.idc.com), world-
wide e-commerce revenue was about $350 billion in 2000 and will rise
to about $3.14 trillion by 2004. GartnerGroup (www.gartner.com) says
worldwide b-to-b online sales will grow from $433 billion in 2000, to
$919 billion in 2001, to $8.5 trillion by 2005. The Boston Consulting
Group (www.bcg.com) estimates b-to-b online revenue in Asia will be
$430 billion by 2003.
The Internet’s economic impact is reported in research conducted
by the University of Texas’ Center for Research in Electronic Commerce,
commissioned by Cisco Systems (www.internetindicators.com). The
fourth study covering the first half of 2000 reveals some fascinating
statistics:

• Although dot-coms have been the center of media attention, they

are not the center of the Internet economy. Only 9.6% of the
firms in the study are true dot-coms, with 95% or more of their
revenue from the Internet.

• For Internet economy companies, Internet revenue is one quarter

the size of non-Internet revenue, but growing three times as fast
as corporate revenue as a whole. In the first half of 2000, Internet
economy companies generated $1 of every $5 in revenue from
the Internet. Internet economy revenue is growing twice as fast as
Internet economy employment. The Internet economy was pro-

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 The Age of the “e” 3

jected to produce $830 billion in revenues in 2000, a 58% in-

crease over 1999.

• The Internet economy directly supports more than 3.088 million

workers. Total employment at Internet economy companies grew
10% between the first quarter of 1999 and the first quarter of
2000. The Internet economy is creating jobs in numerous areas—
and seven of every ten jobs created are traditional, not high-tech
jobs. The job function generating the most Internet-related em-
ployment is sales and marketing (33%), with IT jobs at only 28%.

The report 2000 Economic Impact: U.S. Direct & Interactive Mar-
keting Today, issued by the Direct Marketing Association (www.the-
dma.org), says U.S. consumers and businesses spent over $24 billion as
a result of direct marketers’ online media expenditures in 2000. Direct
marketers spent $2.8 billion on interactive media marketing in 2000,
up from over $1.6 billion in 1999. This, as the report emphasizes, is in
spite of a weaker economy and dot-com failures.
The third annual America Online/Roper Starch Cyberstudy, con-
ducted in August 2000 among a random sample of over 1,000 adult
online users, suggested significant positive shifts in Internet acceptance.
For the first time ever, more than half of the survey respondents said
they shop online, nearly double the percentage who did so two years
ago. More than half the respondents would be interested in using a
small Internet device to go online from any room in their house; close to
half log onto their home accounts even when they are away from home;
and two thirds of the respondents would be interested in checking out a
Web site they’d seen on TV without leaving their TV to find it.

The Wired World

Today the Internet is already a mature medium, despite its newcomer
status. It is certainly the technology area with the most significant and
explosive growth ever. In 1998 and 1999, the Internet’s economic im-
pact on the U.S. economy was clearly proven just by the amount of
venture capital invested in Internet companies and by the number of
successful Internet company IPOs launched. By early 1999, Internet IPOs
had dominated the stock market, creating another round of young bil-

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 4 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

lionaires, not unlike the software boom decades earlier. By late 1999, it
was the dot-coms that moved “offline,” dominating the airwaves, fe-
verishly snapping up television time, and grabbing national magazine
and newspaper space to launch their fledgling brands. By 2000, the
success of the dot-coms had started to dwindle. Many merged and many
more failed, but not before the Internet had permanently become part
of the fabric of American business.
The Internet is very serious business, and it is an unavoidable fact of
business life. A recent study by IT research firm Forrester Research
(www.forrester.com) said that 98% of large businesses (more than 1,000
employees) and 45% of small businesses (less than 100 employees) will
do business online by 2002.
A landmark study done by the NEC Research Institute
(www.neci.nec.com) in early 1999 put the number of individual Web
pages at some 800 million, with 3 million added each day. The pre-
dicted rate of Web page growth is phenomenal, perhaps 1,000% over
the next few years, yet the NEC Research Institute study indicated that
even the most comprehensive Web search engines combined covered no
more than 42% of indexed pages. That is one good reason that Internet
information access services are growing at such a rapid rate. Businesses
that never would have existed before the Internet are now springing up
to help online visitors find what they are really looking for on the Net.
There has never been a time when a mass medium has held such
potential. The Internet is more accessible to more people globally than
any other medium except television. Web sites and e-mail newsletters
are for the most part free.
With all this, however, there are still significant challenges facing
the Internet. One of the greatest of these may be the privacy issue. With
the mass adoption of external e-mail by consumers and businesses alike,
this “private” one-to-one communication quickly became another pro-
motional channel for IT marketers. It was not long before unsolicited
e-mailings (“spamming”) were commonplace.
Now, the heat is very much on those who do not respect an
individual’s privacy on the Internet. For example, the Direct Marketing
Association (www.the-dma.org) launched an electronic media privacy
program in 1998, encouraging organizations that use the Internet for
direct marketing to post a privacy policy prominently on their Web sites.
In February and March 2000, the Federal Trade Commission
(www.ftc.gov) conducted a survey of commercial sites’ information prac-

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 The Age of the “e” 5

tices, using a random sample of 335 Web sites, in addition to “most

popular sites”—91 of the 100 busiest U.S. commercial Web sites. The
survey found the following:

• In the random sample, 88% post at least one privacy disclosure

and 100% of the most popular sites post at least one privacy
disclosure.

• In analyzing these disclosures in light of the fair information prac-

tice principles of Notice, Choice, Access, and Security, the per-
centage drops dramatically. Only 20% of the random sample sites
that collect personal identifying information, and 42% of the most
popular sites, implement, at least in part, all four fair informa-
tion practice principles.

• The commission also looked at the number of companies enrolled

in the primary industry self-regulatory initiative, online privacy
seal programs. The survey found that 8% of the random sample,
and 45% of the most popular sites, display a privacy seal.

The survey led the Federal Trade Commission to conclude that pri-
vacy self-regulation alone would not suffice. As a result, the commis-
sion recommended that Congress enact legislation that will help to ensure
adequate protection of consumer privacy online.
This, of course, is only the federal perspective. There are states that
have already adopted legislation that restricts unsolicited e-mail and
protects consumer privacy. This increasingly strict regulatory environ-
ment should be taken into consideration by every b-to-b marketer.
No less daunting is the technology of the Internet itself and access
to it. On the service side, major telecommunications and cable compa-
nies have already entered the Internet Service Provider (ISP) market.
AT&T, WorldCom, and Sprint provide Internet access services, as do
all of the Regional Bell Operating Companies. Communications giants
are lining up to compete in the massive Internet market. AT&T and
cable leader TCI merged in 1998 so that AT&T could offer cable mo-
dem service. WorldCom integrated its former UUNET division to make
WorldCom the world’s largest business ISP. The Internet access alterna-
tives available to businesses and consumers are proliferating, as are the
ways access can be provided. Internet access over both telephone and

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 6 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

cable connections is commonplace. It’s only a matter of time before

Internet access is bundled with electric service. The end result will be
the same: the massification of the Internet.
One of the biggest concerns has been the bandwidth associated with
delivering Internet service. As more people sign up for Internet access
and actively use the Internet to conduct business, the Internet can be-
come choked with traffic. The demand for bandwidth rises exponen-
tially, but even the bandwidth problem is on the way to being alleviated.
Massive technological improvements are being made to the Internet in-
frastructure by leading networking companies.
Innovations are coming from all sides. Most cable companies are
becoming broadband enabled. Broadband is basically Internet access
over cable, and it is feeding hungry Internet users with electronic infor-
mation at blazingly fast speeds. Broadband is one significant advance,
but it is not the only way that consumers and businesses are getting
high-speed Internet feeds. Through faster ISDN (Integrated Services
Digital Network) connections running over ordinary phone lines, and
with the new higher-speed modems that are hitting the market every
day, fast access will be a diminishing problem for even the smallest busi-
nesses. ISDN is fast being replaced by ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Sub-
scriber Line). Telecommunications and cable companies alike are
introducing DSL rapidly throughout the United States, targeting both
business and home use with the hope that DSL will be the killer Internet
access application. That is because DSL can share phone lines, using
modems that are 50 times faster than conventional modems.
DSL and other technologies mean that Internet access soon will be a
utility. People will not even need to think about turning it on and off,
because it will be like the telephone, cable television, and electricity.
Lately, talk is about the “second Internet,” an industrial-strength
Net that may be only a few years away.
Infrastructures are being built today that are expected to solidify
the Internet economy and make it a global reality. And those infrastruc-
tures may not even be underground. Cisco Systems, the leading manu-
facturer of networking devices, introduced a wireless Internet in the
year 2000. The company planned to offer Internet connections up to
ten times faster than DSL via low-frequency microwave transmission.
Even today, wireless connections to the Internet via cellular phones
and PDAs are possible, and although Europe and Asia are on the lead-

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 The Age of the “e” 7

ing edge of wireless, this market is expected to grow rapidly over the
next several years in the United States. eMarketer, reporting the results
of a 2001 study by the Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems
Forum, says mobile Internet access subscriptions in North America will
grow from just over 2 million in 2005 to 18 million by 2010.

A Paradigm Shift of E-proportions

Before we head off into an exploration of marketing in cyberspace, I
would like to put the subject of technology-driven marketing into his-
torical perspective from my own vantage point. In 1974, I became em-
ployee number 51 at a small company called Epsilon Data Management.
Epsilon was in the business of helping fund-raising and membership
organizations communicate with their constituents—past, current, and
future donors or members.
Epsilon’s real business, though, was database marketing. The four
Epsilon founders had helped pioneer the use of computer technology to
take massive lists of donors’ names and addresses and “smarten” them
with data. Each donor record was constructed with variable-length fields
so that a lot of data could be stored and tracked. Because each donor
could also be given a unique identification number, the data could drive
fund-raising programs that recognized the individual donor’s unique
characteristics.
Epsilon was one of the leaders in a technique called “variable up-
grading.” When each donor received a computer-generated letter, the
suggested donation amount could be varied, based on the donor’s previ-
ous contribution. A majority of donors would in fact upgrade their gifts
to the new suggested amount. Even in mailings of several hundred thou-
sand letters, the technique could be applied. I remember watching the
line printers chunking out the letters on continuous form paper.
I was amazed as the letter-quality line printers were directed by the
computers (mainframes back then) to spit out very respectable corre-
spondence without hesitation. Each letter had a different name and ad-
dress, and each letter and accompanying personalized reply slip had a
different suggested gift amount inserted into the letter text. Signatures
were preprinted or postprinted on the paper stock in blue ink, perfectly

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 8 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

positioned with the computer-generated text, to simulate hand signing.

It all looked very believable, and it was responsible for raising millions
of dollars.
I was witnessing a paradigm shift, of course, although I did not real-
ize it at the time. The 1970s were the early days of computer personaliza-
tion driven by database marketing, now a common and accepted practice.
In those days, it took mainframes in climate-controlled, glass-en-
closed, raised-floor computer rooms to make all of this marketing magic
happen. Today, you could run a sophisticated database program that
does much the same thing, only better, right from your desktop.
The reason for this reminiscing? To demonstrate that, over 25 years
ago, something quite profound happened to marketing. Computer tech-
nology changed it forever.
We can state without reservation that the impact of the Internet on
marketing today is no less profound, and once again, database market-
ing is playing a key role in the evolution of marketing, driving the Internet
to be the ultimate one-to-one relationship-building marketing tool.
Computer technology has stretched across physical boundaries, and
we have created a virtual world no less real than our physical one via
networked communications. The Internet has caused networking, tele-
communications, hardware, and software companies to completely
reengineer themselves. Practically all other businesses are following suit
by reorienting their business operations and information systems for
the electronic future. Organizations are feverishly building intranets (in-
ternal Internet-based networks) and extranets (“private use” external
Webs), depending more and more on the Internet for entire networking
infrastructures.
As a testament to this fundamental change and the influence of the
Internet, you have only to look at the nomenclature of popular IT pub-
lications. CommunicationsWeek, long a major computer industry pub-
lication, was renamed InternetWeek (www.internetwk.com) in late 1997.
In May 2000, PC Computing changed its name to Smart Business and
PC Week became eWeek. Business 2.0, focusing on the Internet economy,
became one of the most successful magazine launches ever. The Wall
Street Journal and The New York Times launched recurring sections on
e-business and the Internet, BusinessWeek introduced e.biz, and Time
magazine spun off On magazine. Now there are more publications (both
in print and in electronic versions) covering the Internet and the Web
than in any other publishing category.

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 The Age of the “e” 9

What the Internet Contains That Marketers Can Use

E-mail
E-mail began, innocently enough, as a convenient electronic means of
communication between one person and another over a local area net-
work. It was largely restricted to, and intended for, internal use.
It was really such companies as America Online (www.aol.com),
CompuServe (www.csi.com), and Prodigy (www.prodigy.com) that popu-
larized the notion of e-mail communication outside the boundaries of cor-
porate networks. Seasoned Internet users may have learned how to send
and receive e-mail, but consumers and general business users needed both
Internet access and e-mail software to take advantage of electronic com-
munications. They got it through the private online service providers.
America Online (AOL), for example, recognized the true mass-mar-
ket opportunity early on, even though CompuServe and Prodigy got
there first. AOL used aggressive marketing tactics to saturate the mar-
ket. I would be surprised if any reader of this book has not received a
diskette from America Online at one time or another, either through
direct mail or as a result of buying a “bagged” magazine with a disk
enclosed. It was America Online that first told millions of young and
old alike “You’ve got mail,” a phrase so ingrained in popular culture
that it became the name of a Tom Hanks movie.
America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and a few other early online
service providers put their own marketing front ends on the Internet to
give it shape and make it palatable for “the rest of us.” While setting the
agenda, the online services were unabashedly self-serving and restric-
tive, and as such, had to scramble and reinvent themselves when the
popularity of the Web in particular usurped them.
In late 1999, Prodigy and SBC, the nation’s largest local telephone
company, announced they would combine their Internet operations, with
SBC taking 43% ownership of Prodigy. This deal would immediately
turn Prodigy, a once-failing ISP, into a powerhouse with more than 2
million customers. More important, Prodigy would now have broad-
band access to the 100 million people served by SBC.
AOL has managed to survive and succeed despite market pressures.
After going through a public relations battering over inadequately sup-
porting the service requirements of its burgeoning user base, AOL re-
covered and is still going strong. By 2000, AOL had over 20 million
subscribers (today it’s 30 million) and reached a new level of promi-

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 10 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

nence with two blockbuster acquisitions, CompuServe and Netscape.

In acquiring its rival, CompuServe, AOL obtained a primarily business
membership base of 2 million subscribers. Under AOL’s ownership,
CompuServe has been maintained as a separate brand.
The acquisition of Netscape was even more strategically important.
In the battle for browser dominance with Microsoft, Netscape may have
been losing ground, but adding AOL to the equation could certainly
make things interesting. In combination with the antitrust suit against
Microsoft, and the fact that Sun Microsystems (creator of Java and Jini)
has now aligned with Netscape, the Internet browser wars took on a
whole new meaning.
The biggest deal was yet to come. On January 10, 2000, AOL an-
nounced the unthinkable: a plan to merge with Time Warner. Incred-
ibly, the smaller but more highly valued AOL would own about 55% of
the new company in a stock deal that would be valued at $350 billion,
the largest in U.S. history.
Regulatory issues notwithstanding, the business and economic sig-
nificance of such a combination cannot be minimized. If ever there
was a question about the Internet’s dominant influence, it was resound-
ingly answered with the AOL–Time Warner deal. Industry and finan-
cial analysts alike immediately recognized the implication: that the
world of e-commerce and media would change forever. At its most
basic level, it brings together the online prowess of AOL with the deep
content and broadband access of Time Warner, but it means far more
than that if you look at all of the properties each company holds, as
well as the far-reaching influence such a mega-corporation will have.
This one merger is as telling of the future as any.
The deal dwarfed the 1999 merger of EarthLink and Mindspring,
an effort to play catch up to AOL’s rising star. Together, these ISPs serve
over three million users. Growth across consumer and business-focused
ISPs has been brisk, even as the traditional telecommunications and
cable firms enter the ISP space.
With the mass acceptance of external e-mail, this “private” one-to-
one communication quickly became another promotional channel for
business-to-business marketers. It wasn’t long before unsolicited e-mail-
ings (“spamming”) were commonplace.
It is this kind of environment, coupled with the Internet’s explosive
growth, that has led to a tougher legislative and regulatory environ-
ment that is already placing severe restrictions on unsolicited e-mail.

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 The Age of the “e” 11

Newsgroups
These havens for information sharing are part of the Usenet, an Internet-
related network of e-mail boxes and newsgroups. Newsgroups were de-
signed to be informal discussion groups, yet some marketers have unwisely
tried to invade them with commercial messages. With the generally nega-
tive response from newsgroup users, most marketers have backed off and
are more cautious about promotional activities surrounding newsgroups.
Some newsgroups will allow promotional messages, but marketers are
advised to carefully follow each newsgroup’s specific rules.

The World Wide Web

Likened to the Wild West in its infancy, the Web as a quickly maturing
adolescent was still a place with a lot of electronic marketing flotsam
and jetsam, but now the Web is well beyond that in terms of business
usage, having matured as a business and marketing medium. Industry
estimates put the number of Web pages created each day at close to 2
million. In the early days, marketers glutted the Web with “brochure-
ware”—nothing more than corporate collateral posted on Web sites.
Although this is still often the case, business-to-business marketing use
of the Web is proliferating as inferior marketers begin to weed them-
selves out. The tantalizing promise of the Web—electronic commerce—
has now emerged as a significant factor for business marketers.

Marketing Benefits of the Internet

The Internet Is Boundless

According to CyberAtlas (www.cyberatlas.internet.com), there were
almost 136 million Internet users in the United States by the end of
2000. Japan ranked second in the world with some 27 million users,
Germany was third with about 19 million, and the United Kingdom
was fourth with about 18 million. China was a surprising fifth, with
almost 16 million online users. The Computer Industry Almanac pro-
jected 490 million people worldwide would have Internet access by the
year 2002.
The economic impact is staggering. Research firm International Data
Corporation (www.idc.com) predicted in March 2001 that e-commerce
revenue will rise from about $350 billion in 2000 to more than $3 tril-
lion by 2004. Growth in the rest of the world will actually outpace that

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 12 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

in the United States, which will capture 38% of the global market by
2004. GartnerGroup (www.gartner.com) forecasted that b-to-b e-com-
merce sales alone will reach $8.53 trillion by 2005.
Imagine the impact on b-to-b marketing if, with this kind of future,
marketers begin to significantly shift their promotional dollars from
traditional media to Internet-related advertising and marketing activi-
ties. Surely, that is inevitable.
Television has long been accepted as the world’s greatest marketing
medium for reach, but at some point in the not-too-distant future, the
Internet could possibly overtake television or converge with it.
Actually, convergence is already here. WebTV (www.webtv.com),
now owned by Microsoft (www.microsoft.com), provides easy televi-
sion access to the Web via a set-top “terminal.” WebTV also provides
Internet access at a variety of price points, similar to Internet service
providers. It is part of Microsoft’s strategy to own emerging Internet
channels of distribution. In June 1999, Microsoft invested $30 mil-
lion in Wink Communications, an interactive TV data service that
could enable TV-based e-commerce. Other entries in this emerging
market take a different approach. WorldGate Communications
(www.wgate.com) feeds Web pages directly through a cable system’s
set-top boxes.
The legitimate question of whether or not the consumer will want
to view the Web in this fashion remains, but the Internet/TV technolo-
gies and services mentioned here and others now in development will
continue to blur the lines between television and the Internet. The con-
sumer convergence market may not directly affect the IT marketer, but
next on the horizon for business is convergence in a different form.
Now every type of portable communications device, from laptop to
organizer to cell phone to pager, will move into the Internet realm as
wireless communications technology advances.
On the service side, major telecommunications and cable compa-
nies have already entered the ISP market. The Internet access alterna-
tives available to businesses and consumers are proliferating, as are the
ways access can be provided. You can now obtain Internet access over
both telephone and cable connections. Someday it may be bundled with
your electric service. The end result will be the same: the commoditizing
of the Internet.
One of the biggest concerns has been the bandwidth associated with
delivering Internet service. As more people sign up for Internet access and

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 The Age of the “e” 13

actively use the Internet to conduct business, networked portions of the

Internet can become choked with traffic. The demand for bandwidth rises
exponentially, but even the bandwidth problem is on the way to being
alleviated. Massive technological improvements to the Internet infrastruc-
ture are being made by leading networking companies.
Innovations are coming from all sides. Broadband is one significant
advance, but it is not the only way that consumers and businesses are
getting high-speed Internet feeds. DSL and other technologies mean the
time is soon at hand when Internet access will be a utility. People will
not even need to think about turning it on and off, because it will be
more like the telephone, cable television, and electricity.
DSL is only the beginning. The year 2000 saw a new surge: the
movement toward a wireless Internet. Cisco Systems, the leading manu-
facturer of networking devices, was an early leader. In December 1999,
the company announced its plans to offer Internet connections up to ten
times faster than DSL via low-frequency microwave transmission. In
2000, hand-held computing devices and cell phones began incorporat-
ing wireless Internet access.
Another movement in late 1999 probably helped fuel Internet growth
dramatically, as free Internet access became a popular phenomenon in
the United States and worldwide. Of course, the catch is that users agree
to view plenty of advertising in exchange for free Internet access. With
PC companies bundling in Internet access with their hardware and cre-
ative telcos (telecommunications companies) using free or reduced-cost
access as a new business hook, the entire world of the ISP has been
turned upside down. The free access concept even penetrated the DSL
market by early 2000.

The Internet Makes Global Marketing a Reality

The Internet continues to grow as rapidly worldwide as it has in the
United States. Europe and Asia are already seeing extraordinary in-
creases in Internet usage. For example, Boston Consulting Group
(www.bcg.com) predicts b-to-b e-commerce in Asia will reach $430
billion by 2003.
The Internet has already become the first truly cost-effective, wide-
spread global marketing medium. With the Internet’s roots in world-
wide networking and its technology enabled via simple telephone line
or television cable access, any marketer theoretically could reach any
online consumer anywhere in the world at any time. Information can be

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 14 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

transmitted via e-mail or over the Web and received instantly, without
regard to time zones or geographic location. No technical skills are nec-
essary to receive it.
Very little on the Internet is currently regulated in terms of interna-
tional markets. As such, the Internet represents a kind of worldwide
electronic free trade zone. Nations are just now trying to determine
what regulations and taxes, if any, should be imposed. The U.S. Con-
gress in 1998 enacted the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which placed a
three-year moratorium on new and discriminatory taxes on Internet
commerce and created a commission to develop a uniform system for
the application of existing taxation of remote sales. The moratorium
was extended in 2001. The World Trade Organization in 1998 reached
agreement among its 132 member countries to not impose customs du-
ties on electronic commerce transmissions.
Also in 1998, the U.S. and Japanese governments agreed to keep
electronic commerce essentially free from regulation and cooperate at
an international level to remove barriers to electronic commerce. A not-
for-profit organization was established by the U.S. government to take
over the technical management of the Internet Domain Name System
(DNS). The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed to ratify and
implement the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copy-
right Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, pro-
tecting copyrighted material online.
As for the Internet’s continuing worldwide reach, international ac-
ceptance is growing rapidly. Although the Internet is still predominantly
an English-language medium and the largest area of Internet activity is
in the United States, the trend is changing. According a May 2001 re-
port from the Aberdeen Group (www.aberdeen.com), 80% of multina-
tional b-to-b companies will move to global Web sites by 2004. It is
interesting to note that Aberdeen says that 68% of Internet users will be
non-English-speaking by 2003, and that e-commerce spending will be
larger outside the United States in that same time period. This means
U.S. businesses who don’t globalize their Web sites could be missing
significant opportunities.

The Internet Reaches People with Intellect, Power, and Money

Despite the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, early Internet users were
somewhat elite—educated, influential, and upscale. In the case of busi-
nesses, this often means key decision makers.

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 The Age of the “e” 15

The core audience of the Internet is still there, even as the Internet
becomes more of a reflection of the U.S. and global population. It is likely
that these affluent individuals will still be primary users of e-commerce
and thus continue to form the core of the Internet’s true buying public.
The Internet is home to these desirable and discerning consumers and
business people. They are predominantly individuals who may watch tele-
vision only occasionally but are avid Internet surfers and in many cases
Internet buyers. By the way, the Internet has shaken its early reputation
as a predominantly male haven. By 2001, close to half of all Internet
users in North America were women, according to various reports.
As the Internet marches into consumer homes and smaller businesses,
the bar will drop even further, changing the demographics and making
it more a reflection of society. Yet b-to-b marketers will still be able to
find and target the upscale, influential buyers they are looking for—
those who started the stampede in the first place.

The Internet Offers Increased Business Penetration

As a business tool, the Internet is unprecedented in its penetration of
the business community. As previously mentioned, the Internet’s his-
toric roots are implanted in science and business, and business-to-busi-
ness usage has continued to lead the growth of the Internet. With the
emphasis on intranets and extranets, business-to-business usage is vir-
tually exploding, even as consumers “sign on” at a dizzying rate. The
Internet will continue to be an accepted place, potentially the preferred
place, for businesses to do business and for marketers to reach business
people. In fact, the opportunities for segmentation and targeting prolif-
erate dramatically with the Internet’s growth.
One of the very real differentiators of the Internet’s power is that it
has a remarkable leveling effect on business. It can make a very small
company look larger than it is. That means even a tiny company can
compete, at least electronically, with organizations many times its size.
That company can now extend its marketing efforts through the Internet
to any part of the globe and take advantage of the same Internet chan-
nel used by industry giants. Internet technology is inexpensive, is widely
available, and can be completely outsourced. A company does not have
to make a major investment to get on the Net and use it as a powerful
means of marketing.
Even if a company does not aggressively use the Internet to market
itself, that organization can benefit greatly from using the Internet as a

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 16 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

competitive research and business learning tool. This is one of the some-
times hidden benefits of the Internet. It is nothing short of amazing how
much information companies post about themselves on their Web sites.
Sometimes you have to wonder if they are so enamored with the tech-
nology that they will put even the most sensitive company documents
out there for anyone to see. This is a gold mine for all of us who con-
sider some form of marketing as our livelihoods. What used to take
weeks of work now takes minutes, because competitive research can be
accomplished with a few clicks of the mouse. The value of this aspect of
the Internet extends far beyond marketing alone. With the amount of
information resident on the Web, virtually any research in any disci-
pline can be conducted online and at no cost for the information itself.
On the downside, however, the Internet is certainly seductive. A
number of studies have suggested that unrestricted employee Internet
usage can seriously reduce company productivity. As a result, an entire
business centered on “site blocking” has developed, as software compa-
nies pitch products that cut down on unauthorized Web visits.
Another hidden benefit of the Internet for marketers is the way in
which it improves overall business efficiency. Beyond marketing, using
the Internet to do business is both efficient and competitively wise. My
company, Directech | eMerge (www.directechemerge.com) is a direct
marketing agency whose business efficiency has dramatically increased
because of the Internet. Of course, we routinely use e-mail to communi-
cate with clients and prospects. We also present conceptual creative work
over our own secure WorkWeb. Some of our clients prefer to view work
this way, and as a result, it has replaced paper layouts. This way of
doing business is particularly advantageous when we need to present
creative work to a local client contact in Massachusetts along with con-
tacts on the West Coast or in Europe who need to review the work
simultaneously. In fact, it helps the local client enormously.
At other times we have posted direct mail work on a client’s intranet
or extranet so that its sales force, distributors, or resellers could see the
work prior to distribution to customers and prospects. Not only does
this facilitate communications, it also eliminates the cost of printing an
overage of the mailing and sending it to these internal audiences.
One of the fastest-growing applications in this area is Internet
conferencing. Through such technologies as Internet telephony and au-
diovisual streaming, communicating in real time over the Web is be-

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 The Age of the “e” 17

coming commonplace, dramatically increasing business efficiency as

cybermeetings replace face-to-face meetings.

The Internet Provides a Unique Form of Communications Intimacy

If marketing is about building relationships, then Internet marketing is
about building lasting relationships. With the medium’s maturation and
the increasing integration of database marketing practices, targeting and
one-to-one marketing on the Internet are fast becoming the norm, and
that means marketers will be able to address the individualized needs of
constituents.
Targeting on the Internet, as you will see in subsequent chapters, is
not only feasible, it can be almost as efficient as direct mail in reaching
particular audiences. There are as many specialized Web sites as there
are specialized trade publications—primarily because virtually every
specialized publication has established a sister Web site. That means
you can be as selective with Web-based media as you can with print-
based media.
The same is true of lead generation and order generation programs.
You can select the most appropriate Web sites for banner ad placement
and reach a targeted audience, as you would with traditional print me-
dia. Outbound unsolicited e-mail certainly does not have the accep-
tance of traditional direct mail, nor can it match direct mail list
selectability, but the use of e-mail is another option that should be con-
sidered, if cautiously. Legitimate opt-in lists of individuals who are will-
ing to receive promotional e-mail are increasingly available for rental.
Customers and prospects who are receptive to promotional e-mail
could form the basis for an e-mail list that is potentially one of your
best-performing lists. E-mail lists will continue to come onto the mar-
ket, and the selection criteria will continue to improve as promotional
e-mail gains acceptance. E-mail newsletters are enormously popular
because they put valuable information into subscribers’ e-mailboxes,
usually free of charge. E-mail is one-to-one correspondence, quite like
traditional direct mail. Today at least, e-mail is private, personal, and
read more attentively than any other medium.
The World Wide Web is truly an intimate and personal “playspace”
for adults. Used effectively, the Web can deliver personalized content to
each and every visitor, or even automatically to a visitor’s computer
desktop via push technologies. As a result, a marketer can initiate a

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 18 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

one-to-one relationship via e-mail and the Web with a prospect, cus-
tomer, or business partner. The marketer can also learn from that rela-
tionship via database marketing and grow the relationship over time.

The Internet Changes the Economics of Marketing

The stunning cost implications of electronic marketing in part fuel the
Internet’s unprecedented growth. The Internet is not only cost-effective,
it is downright cheap in comparison to other media. The Yankee Group
(www.yankeegroup.com) estimates that Internet direct marketing is 60
to 65% cheaper than traditional direct mail marketing.
A marketer can build and host a Web site and reach a worldwide
audience at a cost that is far less than the cost of one national television
commercial. Electronic communication has a whole different cost struc-
ture from traditional print, direct mail, telemarketing, or television me-
dia. There are no media placement costs associated with launching a
corporate Web site or employing e-mail as a marketing medium. You
may have to rent e-mail addresses, but you do not have to engage print-
ers or mailhouses, or pay postage, when you disseminate e-mail. There
are no hotel, travel, or on-site materials costs for virtual seminars and
events. There are no printing and mailing costs for electronic fulfill-
ment. Even order taking is cheaper with the Internet, especially if elec-
tronic catalogs are used to replace traditional paper catalogs.

The Internet Establishes a Brand-New Sales Channel

The Internet completely transforms the selling process for marketers.
Successful electronic commerce users have found that they can dramati-
cally reduce the cost of sale via the Internet. The story of Amazon.com
(www.amazon.com), a company that defied the standard practice of
opening retail store locations and instead chose to sell books exclu-
sively on the Internet, is legendary.
Amazon.com became one of the most successful Internet business
launches ever and forged the way for other hard goods marketers (in-
cluding many competitors) to stake their claim on the electronic fron-
tier (more about Amazon.com later). With the advent of secure online
ordering, electronic commerce will undoubtedly reach its full potential
as more marketers use the Internet to sell their goods and services.
A review of both specialized and general media sources suggested
that 1997 was the year the Internet found its legs as a tool for selling.
Although electronic commerce was still in its infancy, 1997 saw the

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 The Age of the “e” 19

Internet’s first $1 billion in advertising revenue, according to Reuters,

up from $267 million in 1996. As proof positive of the future, con-
sumer goods giants took to the Internet in 1997, not just by establishing
top-shelf Web sites, but by aggressively integrating Internet advertising
and electronic commerce initiatives into their promotional marketing
strategies. In 1998, consumer giant Procter and Gamble organized an
unusual Internet marketing summit to elicit ideas for future initiatives.
In 1998 and 1999, e-commerce really hit its stride. There was greatly
increased activity on the consumer side, but the majority of Internet-
based sales have still been generated by businesses selling to businesses.
The successes of the past few years have been nothing short of mind-
boggling.
Dell Computer (www.dell.com) is just one example of that. By the
end of 1997, Dell was logging $4 million a day from online sales. By
2000, Dell had reportedly achieved ten times that number: $40 million
a day from e-commerce alone. According to the company, online sales
accounted for 25% of Dell’s business by early 1999, and by 2000, half
of Dell’s revenues were from online sales. The majority of Dell’s sales
are business-to-business.
Networking giant Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com) had already es-
tablished an industry-leading e-commerce benchmark by the end of 1997,
averaging $9 million per day of online sales. That translated into 40%
of the company’s total annual revenue being generated via the Web,
even in those “early days” of e-commerce.

Intranets and Extranets

B-to-b companies are not just driving electronic commerce. They quickly
went beyond Internet marketing usage alone, creating intranets and
extranets, perhaps two of the most-used words in the trade press in
their current reporting of the Internet.
Both intranets and extranets are now becoming populated with
marketing initiatives. Technically an Internet-enabled internal network
intended primarily for employee usage, an intranet is a media channel
in and of itself—a very targeted one, in fact. Imagine if a Fortune 500
company were to allow advertising on its intranet—so that its employ-
ees would receive promotional messages from select providers of prod-
ucts and services. What if that same company were to actively promote

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 20 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

its own products and services, and those of its divisions, to the em-
ployee base? This kind of intracompany advertising can easily occur
over an intranet—and it is already in use.
Through an intranet, large companies can market themselves very
effectively and provide highly valued service to a very targeted audi-
ence—their employees. Now companies are building enterprise infor-
mation portals (EIPs), a kind of super-intranet through which employees
and other insiders can easily access all of the company’s information
resources from anywhere.
An extranet is really a private-label Web site, offering access to a
select group of customers, prospects, partners, or suppliers outside the
sponsoring organization’s network. It is the extranet, and all its varia-
tions, that companies started using in earnest in 1997 to help solidify
existing business relationships and form new ones.
These extranets have proliferated rapidly and now take on numer-
ous forms. Some extranets service only customers; others are targeted
specifically to business partners. Some are designed as private consor-
tiums where members share resources and do business with each other.
Still other extranets provide private-access seminars, courses, and con-
ferences, either free or paid, to prospects, customers, partners, or stu-
dents. The extranet is both a useful marketing channel itself and, like an
intranet, a place to potentially reach targeted audiences.
This, too, is an aspect of the Internet that is not quite the same as any
other medium. You can create intranets, extranets, Web sites, Web commu-
nities, and newsgroups—tangible places where business can be conducted,
marketing information can be exchanged, and dialog can occur—and then
you can use these newly created media vehicles to place promotional adver-
tising that takes further advantage of Internet marketing.
Even at the beginning of the Internet marketing curve, there was a
remarkable richness to the medium. Now there is no turning back. There
can be little doubt that the Internet is having a permanent impact and a
lasting effect, not just on marketing, but on the manner in which busi-
nesses conduct business.

How the Internet Intersects with Direct Marketing

Now here’s a brief direct marketing history lesson. I think you will see
the relevance. Direct marketing actually started in the late 1800s in the

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 The Age of the “e” 21

United States. This is when marketers began to create and place direct
response advertising in some of the country’s leading national maga-
zines. These magazines were the only medium available to reach large
portions of the population with advertising messages. Many of those
early ads used direct marketing techniques, such as cutout coupons and
money-back guarantees, that you would recognize today. Even more
remarkable, numerous ads promoted products for direct sale to the
American consumer.
I collect these old ads. (In fact, I have collected many of them via
purchases on eBay, an online auction site—more about auction sites
later!) One ad I have is a great example of early America’s invincible
spirit. The ad promotes an Underwood typewriter. The advertiser offers
to ship it to the reader on approval—without obligation! Imagine what
it took to send a heavy typewriter across the United States in the early
1900s. Imagine the faith the manufacturer must have had in the con-
sumer to offer it without cost. This was the crude forerunner of the
credit card, because the manufacturer was extending credit to an un-
known prospective buyer.
That was just the beginning of direct marketing’s rising popularity.
With the advent of direct mail, the direct marketing business went
through its own paradigm shift. Cut-out coupons that appeared in early
magazine advertising did not go away—they still exist in newspaper
circulars and in some print advertising—but a new format for the cou-
pon was introduced: the business reply card and order form in direct
mail. Generating leads and orders via direct mail and, later, by phone,
quickly became the staple of consumer and b-to-b direct marketers alike.
Database marketing was another direct marketing breakthrough of
historic proportions. Yet it was a small, far simpler technological inno-
vation that truly changed the direct marketing business forever. It was
this innovation that opened the door for personal direct marketing
interactivity: the toll-free 800 telephone number.
The 800 number has been in existence since 1967, yet it has been so
thoroughly embraced by the world in recent years that the supply of
800 numbers has already been exhausted. In 1996, 888 numbers were
introduced, and in 1998, 877 numbers had to be added to supplement
800 numbers.
The impact of the 800 number on direct marketing cannot be un-
derestimated. It was Joe Sugarman, a marketer who pioneered selling
electronic gadgets via mail order, who first used the toll-free number as
a direct marketing order vehicle in ads that appeared in The Wall Street

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 22 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

Journal. He created a whole new form of “we pay for the call” market-
ing and changed the dynamics of the inquiry and order process forever.
The toll-free number functionally reverses telephone charges so that the
caller does not pay, but it does something more important than that: the
toll-free number extends a marketer’s reach. It removes a physical, costly
barrier to eliciting a response from a prospect or customer. Now, the
individual can make a quick, easy call to any location without paying
for it, and if the telemarketer is so staffed, that person can call 24/7.
Think about what the 800 number really does. It means that a mar-
keter can effectively open up the entire North American market and
serve customers from anywhere, still maintaining the brand and prod-
uct awareness so important to the marketer. In many cases, a marketer
can even select a toll-free number that supports and enhances the brand
(some examples: 1-800-CALL-ATT, 1-800-THE-CARD [American Ex-
press], 1-800-MATTRES [Dial-a-Mattress]).
The 800 number is now universally recognized and accepted by all
marketers, but it revolutionized mail order marketing. Mail order mar-
keters learned that by offering an 800 number, two things happened:

1. Their number of orders via the 800 number outpulled other re-
sponse paths.

2. In addition, the total number of orders from all sources generally

increased as well. In other words, adding the 800 number had a
residual effect: It increased the overall volume of orders coming
in from all response paths.

This is a principle that applies well to b-to-b direct marketing. By

offering multiple response paths, you tend to increase overall response.
That is because individuals tend to respond, well, individually, and by
offering them many response options, you respect each individual’s de-
sired way of responding. Some people are comfortable picking up the
phone; others prefer responding via mail or fax. Still others would much
rather respond over the Internet.
You would be hard pressed to find any serious mail order marketer
who does not offer an 800 number. Of course, you still may chuckle
when you see and hear them over and over again on those silly televi-
sion commercials, but they work—or you would not see them repeat-

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 The Age of the “e” 23

edly used. Mail order success with the 800 number led to general busi-
ness success. Now the 800 number has reached mass acceptance.
With mass acceptance comes the “put it everywhere” syndrome. It
was not long before you began to see 800 numbers appearing frequently
in print ads and television commercials. You even began to see them as
customer service enhancements on consumer goods products—cereal
boxes, potato chips, detergents, and the like.
In effect, the 800 number has now become not only an accepted
part of marketing, but an accepted part of life, part of the fabric of
America, a commodity that is no longer just a marketing gimmick, but
rather a necessary business tool.

The Internet Address Is the New 800 Number

Have you noticed that there is something different appearing at the bot-
tom of magazine ads and at the end of television commercials? It is not
an 800 number anymore, it is the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of
a Web site. Look for the “www” on ads and on TV. It is everywhere, the
way the 800 number used to be. The Web address is becoming the new
800 number—at least in the minds of advertisers and their advertising
agencies, and that is just one basic reason why the Internet is transform-
ing direct marketing. It is a transformation that is destined to reach far
beyond what the 800 number had to offer.
Suppose Internet usage continues to grow at its current rate. That
means the Internet will be the medium with the most extensive reach—
perhaps even topping television. As indicated earlier, widespread accep-
tance and dropping access prices will dramatically accelerate this growth.
What will this growth mean to b-to-b direct marketers? The use of
direct marketing itself continues to grow in its own right. A Direct
Marketing Association study says that direct marketing is expected to
outpace total U.S. growth through 2002, growing at a rate of almost
7% annually.
This same report projects that interactive marketing will grow by
54% annually through 2002, and that electronic commerce will grow
by nearly 61% annually. This and other forecasts cited in this book
point to the same conclusion: It will not be long before the Internet will
be the undisputed king of the media world.

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 24 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

What we have, then, is an interesting phenomenon. From a market-

ing perspective, use of the Internet is growing at such a rate that it could
overshadow and surpass traditional media.
This suggests an intriguing scenario on the near horizon that b-to-b
marketers must take into consideration:

If the Internet takes over the lead, and other media flatten out,
then marketers will become more reliant on the Internet as the
driver of marketing programs.

It’s All About Integrated Marketing

I believe that, even now, we have reached a point of intersection be-

tween usage of the Internet and usage of traditional direct marketing
media (Figure 1.1). At this intersection point, the Internet and other
media cross. After the intersection point, the Internet trajectory contin-
ues upward and traditional media begin to flatten out. As the next few
years progress, usage of the Internet goes up steeply, so the gap widens.
In b-to-b marketing, the Internet incline is likely to be much steeper
than in consumer marketing. Earlier adoption of Internet marketing by
business marketers is the primary driver of this phenomenon. With the
Internet playing such a key role generally in businesses, the use of Internet
marketing should accelerate even more rapidly. In the next few years,
you will likely see a very different marketing world emerging.
My own “direct” experience has convinced me that the Internet is
as much a true direct marketing medium as it is a new, exciting channel
that will enhance all forms of marketing communications and facilitate
response.
The significance of Internet marketing is even greater with a more
clouded economic picture. When you consider the potential to very eco-
nomically reach large audiences via e-mail, online advertising, affiliate mar-
keting, and your own Web site promotions, Internet marketing can look
like a media bargain. Of course, you need to balance that factor against the
reality that Internet marketing is still not nearly as targetable as direct mail.
With direct mail lists, you have a much greater ability to segment and tar-
get audiences with pinpoint accuracy, but that is changing as Internet mar-
keting matures and online targeting opportunities increase.

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 The Age of the “e” 25

Internet
Usage

Traditional Media

Intersection Point

Years

Figure 1.1. The Internet and traditional direct marketing media are now at an
intersection. Over the next few years, the Internet trajectory continues upward,
while traditional media begin to flatten out.

I think the Internet will surely dominate—but it will not completely

replace other media. I cannot see direct mail dying off, any more than
other forms of direct marketing and advertising have disappeared. Di-
rect mail will continue to have its rightful place, as advertising has
had before it, but Internet marketing has already become an accepted
and increasingly popular method for successful b-to-b marketers. Now
the challenge is how to intelligently integrate Internet marketing with
advertising, direct marketing, and other means of promotion so that it
becomes part of the mix, not a standalone element. Moreover, mar-
keters will need to learn how to ensure that the same measurement
criteria can be applied to Internet marketing as to traditional direct
marketing.

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 26 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

Transition to Integrated Marketing Now

As marketing becomes more reliant on the Internet, b-to-b marketers

will face a new media world—one that has different kinds of challenges.
With the upward spiral of the Internet trajectory, you will need to ad-
just your marketing and media strategies. What this really means is that
you will need to redefine your use of direct marketing in the context of
the Internet if you have not already done so… and ready yourself for a
marketing future that looks very different from the past.
Much of the impact of the Internet in this new future will be based
on “one-to-one” e-enabled communications. This is the notion of ad-
dressing individual prospect and customer needs via personalized e-mail
and Web-based communications. It is already playing a prominent role
in b-to-b and b-to-c marketing. We will talk more about this in the
Chapter 7, “Building Customer Relationships.”
Are you taking advantage of Internet and traditional media integra-
tion? To do so, you should continue to use advertising, mail, phone, and
other traditional media, but now is the time to increasingly enhance
them by adding Internet response paths, offering Internet fulfillment,
using e-mail for follow-ups, driving individuals to your Web site, and
inviting prospects and customers to virtual events that occur on the
Internet.

Now is the time to build a marketing strategy that will com-

bine the best of traditional media with the one-to-one power
of Internet media.

At the end of the book, you will find a complete blueprint to help
you implement this strategy. For now, here is an overview of the basic
steps you will need to take:

1. Assess your Internet marketing readiness. Now is the time to evalu-

ate your organization’s Internet marketing capabilities. Are you
pursuing Internet marketing now? How far along the media inte-
gration curve are you? Evaluate your company’s current use of
Internet technology and your current use of Internet marketing.

– Do you already take inquiries over the Web? Are you doing
electronic fulfillment? Are these things in your future plans?

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 The Age of the “e” 27

– Is your Web site capable of order entry, processing, and track-

ing?

– Do you have a marketing database that can be integrated with

the Internet? Have you started to use database-driven Internet
marketing?

– Is your organization planning investments to make all of this

happen?

2. Make the move to Internet direct marketing. Do not let the as-
sessment process deter you. Understand your current state of readi-
ness and recognize where you are today—and where you will
need to be soon. Study what your competitors are doing and make
sure you are keeping up or, better yet, at least a step ahead of
them. Integrate the Internet with your use of traditional media
and conventional direct marketing. This book will help you un-
derstand how to do that by showing you successful strategies and
tactics used by other b-to-b marketers.

3. Prepare your management for the Internet-dominated future. The

Internet has already captured top-of-mind awareness among se-
nior management at many companies. Make sure your company
is one of them. Help your management prepare for the electronic
future by sharing Internet direct marketing information from au-
thoritative sources. Don’t let the dot-com disasters color your
organization’s long-term strategy. There has certainly been some
fallout, but the Internet will continue to have a permanent impact
on marketing and business. You can’t afford to be left behind.

4. Develop an Internet marketing action plan. If you are in a posi-

tion to do so, participate on or chair a committee in your organi-
zation that is charged with developing an implementation plan
for using the Internet as a strategic marketing tool. You may find
that there is an even larger issue—using the Internet as a strategic
business tool, and even becoming an e-business. If management
is already on that course, so much the better. Then Internet mar-
keting and electronic commerce can be positioned as a logical
subset of your organization’s e-business plan.

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 28 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING

Going Global: How Internet Marketing Can Create a

Worldwide Business for B-to-B Companies

As a marketing medium, the Internet is the easiest, most cost-effective

route to global marketing. There has never been a single medium that,
even at its inception, offered this promise. The Internet is very much a
medium that already has the infrastructure necessary to serve interna-
tional markets from the United States, and to encourage businesses from
outside the United States to market their products and services here.
Now, how does all of this impact b-to-b marketing?
If your company has any kind of substantial sales revenue, chances
are there already is an international marketing component to your busi-
ness. As a matter of course, most U.S.-based companies extend their
marketing activities into Canada without hesitation. Various sources
report that over half the Canadian population now have Internet ac-
cess. (Here’s an interesting aside: Time and again, Canada proves to be
fertile ground for marketers of computers and other information tech-
nology products. My experience has been that direct mail response rates
from mailings directed to Canadian prospects outpull U.S. response rates,
sometimes by as much as 2 to 1.)
After Canada, the next market many U.S. companies seem to pur-
sue is the United Kingdom. Logic tells us it is because of the commonal-
ity of the English language that England, Scotland, and Ireland are prime
targets, with Australia and New Zealand close behind. These markets
are also exhibiting burgeoning Internet usage.
Depending on the geographical distribution of a company’s sales of-
fices or distributors, the rest of the world may change in marketing prior-
ity. Certain European countries may be next in line. Latin America may
show the most promise for some. IDC (www.idc.com) projects e-com-
merce in Latin America to hit $8 billion by 2003, with 19 million users.
The Pacific Rim may be a likely target. Japan, Hong Kong, and China are
certain to be tantalizing markets for larger U.S. companies. The point is
that U.S. companies have already established a strong foothold beyond
the boundaries of the United States. Taking full advantage of the global
economy is nothing new for them.
What is new, however, is the global marketing impact of the Internet.
The Internet truly flattens the world. The rate of growth in Europe is
impressive, but even more so in the Asia Pacific region. IDC’s 2001
projections indicate that the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, will
see Internet usage grow to more than 240 million users in 2005 from

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 The Age of the “e” 29

just 64 million users in 2000. That means Internet usage in the Asia
Pacific region could be greater than in the United States by 2005.
Even if the b-to-b marketer wants to make use of e-mail alone, glo-
bal marketing becomes an inexpensive reality. With an e-mail address
in hand, a marketer can reach anyone, anywhere. E-mail is delivered in
most cases to an individual’s personal computer private mailbox. Send-
ing e-mail from the United States to Hong Kong is no more expensive
than sending it from one town in Massachusetts to another. The Internet
simply does not recognize physical distance. What could be more at-
tractive for a global marketer?
The primary place for business to be done on the Internet is, of course,
the World Wide Web. There are currently some one million Web sites on
the Web, and the growth is not letting up. All those URLs (Uniform Re-
source Locators) start with http://www, representing “HyperText Trans-
fer Protocol” and the “World Wide Web.” Most of us simply call it the
Web, but we should not overlook the significance of those first two Ws.
Surf the Web and you quickly realize that you can happen upon non-
U.S. sites very easily. (They are typically identified by a country abbrevia-
tion at the end of the URL, such as .uk for the United Kingdom.) It is just
as easy to get to a site in any state as it is to get to a site in any country of
the world. It is no more complicated to get to a U.S. site from outside this
country. It is all quite transparent and instantaneous.
It is not difficult to understand why this phenomenon occurs. You
can search, find, and link to any Web site in the world, simply by enter-
ing its URL. Your computer does not care where the host computer is—
and at this stage of the Internet’s life, you pay no premium or penalty
for accessing a site on the other side of the globe. Probably all you do is
make a local phone call and, magically, you are connected.
That is one extremely compelling reason why global Internet mar-
keting—and the electronic commerce associated with it—is predicted to
escalate so dramatically in the next several years. Today, nothing brings
the world closer at a lower price, than the Internet. B-to-b marketers
with global goals are now establishing mirror sites and multiple lan-
guage versions of their Web sites; Internet translation tools are avail-
able that make this easy to do. It is only a matter of time until these
same marketers use their Web sites to accept and fulfill orders online
from customers worldwide.
In fact, they do not even have to process the orders themselves. To-
day, there is a whole class of Web sites that “insulate” the marketer
from the entire order-taking and fulfillment process. These “electronic

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malls,” or Web communities, are really Web storefronts, established by

an electronic commerce reseller who rents space to marketers on a
multiadvertiser Web site. Some malls are set up so that the marketer still
handles inquiries and orders. Others overlay an order-processing front
end onto the site so that the marketer becomes one of many who take
advantage of a system already in place—at a cost that may be far lower
than doing it in-house.
Another option is outsourcing Internet services to ASPs (Applica-
tion Service Providers). ASPs offer sophisticated e-business and e-com-
merce offerings on a subscription-type basis, so companies do not have
to invest in the technology and infrastructure.
There are, of course, both advantages and disadvantages to such
approaches. On the positive side, the marketer gets someone else to do
all the promotional, technical, and operational work. On the negative
side, the marketer shares resources and customers with others and there-
fore relies on the site owner’s capabilities to bring in and support the
business, or relies on the ASP’s resources, which may be limited. None-
theless, these are fascinating business models that can potentially launch
a marketer’s worldwide business effort quickly and cost-effectively.
For some marketers with a large international component to their
businesses, the Internet is nothing short of a marketing miracle. Imag-
ine the small company with international marketing goals. With the
Internet, this business owner can communicate 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, with points worldwide via inexpensive e-mail. The savings on
international phone calls, faxes, delivery services, and travel can be as-
tonishing. Similarly, if this same business establishes a Web site, a literal
world of opportunities opens up:

• The company can promote its Web site to prospects and custom-
ers simply by including the URL on business cards and letter-
head, and in literature and other promotional materials.

• The Web site can be a repository of information, in multiple lan-

guages if necessary, that can be accessed by anyone, from any
place at any time.

• The Web site could become an order-processing channel so that

the company could accept orders from its worldwide customers
and acknowledge these orders electronically.

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 The Age of the “e” 31

• The company can set up an extranet, using the Web as a place

where business can be privately conducted between the company
and worldwide customers and suppliers.

• The company principal could even hold special events or conduct

live video conferencing via the Web.

The marketer can take full advantage of the Internet’s global reach
in numerous ways. The following are just a few of the possibilities.

Expanding Markets and Territories

Marketing no longer has to artificially stop at a country’s borders. An
Internet marketing program can make a global initiative not only pos-
sible but also practical. A company’s Web site can be mirrored in sev-
eral languages, and it can address country-specific issues. An intranet
can be established to provide low-cost, instant communications with
every sales office, sales representative, distributor, reseller or retailer
worldwide. An extranet can be used to admit partners, suppliers, and
customers into select portions of the intranet. The Web site can be pro-
moted inexpensively throughout the world with links on other Web pages
and in e-mail newsletters. Simple, inexpensive mailings can be executed
in each target country to drive prospects to the corporate Web site.

Developing Global Marketing Partnerships

Internet marketing makes joint ventures attractive and easy to imple-
ment. A b-to-b marketer can join together with one or more partners
whose products or services complement the marketer’s products or ser-
vices. Then this consortium can pool their resources. They can execute
cooperative e-mail campaigns by sharing each other’s lists or form a
collaborative Web site that features their solution set. They can also use
their own extranet to speed communication with sales and marketing
personnel from all participating companies throughout the world.

Providing Worldwide Customer Service

In an era of emphasized customer service, the b-to-b marketer can now
use the Internet as the foundation for 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week, 365-
day-a-year customer support. How a company services its business cus-
tomers differentiates it from its competitors. The Internet can facilitate
online customer service centers and provide customer-only information,

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service, support, and, in the case of software and information, live prod-
uct. With the advent of Internet telephony, companies will be able to
interconnect the Internet and voice response, so customer service will
take on a new level of quality.

Approach Global Marketing with Caution

Despite all the apparent benefits of global Internet marketing, it should

be pointed out that marketers cannot take other countries and their popu-
lations for granted. The European countries are a good example. Europe-
ans live on a single continent, have open borders, trade freely, and are
currently engaged in moving to a unified European currency, yet each
country retains its very distinct personality and, in the case of marketing,
individuals in each country may react differently to promotions.
Additional issues may occur that could create barriers to Internet-
related marketing activities. For example, Europeans generally are less
likely to share personal profile information. In fact, some countries have
regulations restricting the use of such information. Stringent privacy
regulations covering all of Europe, effective October 2001, make it ille-
gal to solicit via e-mail without the express permission of the consumer.
E-commerce may also be less desirable to Europeans because of indi-
vidual country currencies, individual country taxes, shipping products
across borders, and other issues. As a result, you cannot assume that an
Internet marketing program that works successfully in the United States
will automatically succeed globally.
If you are going to make a serious effort to market in Europe or
anywhere else in the world, you would do well to learn about the likes
and dislikes of the business population in each target country. You will
need to know what kind of messaging works and does not work, and
how much of what you routinely use in the United States will work in
other countries. You will also have to recognize the fact that, to best
appeal to a specific country’s population, you will need to understand
cultural differences and communicate in that country’s language. U.S.
companies that have mailed English-language material into the Quebec
province of Canada have learned that lesson the hard way.
Generally, concentrating on any specific country means doing your
marketing homework by enlisting the help of an outside resource within
that country or by relying on your own local country representatives.

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People who live in the target country, or at least have intimate knowl-
edge of that country, are the best sources of marketing information.
Global marketing can cause numerous problems for the U.S. b-to-b
marketer. In many cases, U.S. direct mail campaigns use colloquial ex-
pressions and “American humor” that may not translate well into other
languages. Several languages, most notably German, take up consider-
ably more physical space than English, and mailing sizes, specifications,
and postage vary from country to country. The European size for mail-
ing packages, for example, is different from standard U.S. sizes. Adver-
tising specifications are publication specific, and, depending on the
publication, the primary language may not be English. Even English is
not English—at least in the rest of the world, which tends to use the
British conventions for spelling (e.g., colour, not color; organisation,
not organization) and grammar. Even the meanings of words can change.
The Internet generally makes global marketing less complicated, but
marketers with a sizable stake outside the United States should take
advantage of the medium’s ability to version messages for different pros-
pects based on where they reside—respecting their individuality and
catering to it. With that in mind, the Internet clearly has the potential to
escalate global marketing in a way no medium before it has done—
providing business marketers with a potential for worldwide business
they could previously only dream about.

The New Response Model: “Intersponding”

We have been talking about how the Internet transforms direct market-
ing and drives the globalization of marketing. Now it is time to address
the most intriguing aspect of Internet direct marketing: how the Internet
will fundamentally change the way people interact with marketers and
respond to them.

The Nature of the Internet

It is important to put the Internet in the context of other direct market-

ing media to discover whether or not it “looks and feels” the same—so
we know how suspects, prospects, and customers will react to it.

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What Is Its Content?

Internet content is diverse. Like print advertising and direct mail, the
content of the Internet is largely based on the written word. As with
printed media, the Web portion of the Internet can and does rely on
graphic images to support marketing messages.

What Is Its Form?

Unlike print and direct mail, the Web enables moving graphics and sound
to be conveyed to the suspect, prospect, or customer. In that respect, it is
more like radio or television, and like the telephone, the Web can enable
one-to-one, interactive communication with e-mail or, as technology
progresses, even with voice. Yet, unlike any direct response medium, the
Web can present the suspect, prospect, or customer with a virtually un-
limited amount of marketing information in multimedia format.

What Is Its Delivery Format?

Print advertising is delivered through magazines and newspapers. Di-
rect mail is delivered via the U.S. Postal Service or another delivery ser-
vice. Radio and television are delivered via airwaves through passive
listener or viewer devices. Telemarketing is delivered over telephone lines.
Only the Internet (at least until computers truly converge with televi-
sions) is delivered directly via a computer. This is the most intriguing
part of Internet direct marketing—and one of the primary differentiat-
ing factors that sets this medium apart from any other.
Finally, unlike any other medium, the computer delivers Internet-
based Web content in an entirely new form: nonlinear information. All
other media are linear: They have a beginning, middle, and end. Direct
response print advertising has a headline at the beginning, body copy in
the middle, and a call to action at the end. A direct mail package is
typically organized in a very logical, linear fashion: The outside enve-
lope is first, followed by the letter, brochures and any inserts, and the
reply device with a call to action, and each individual element of the
package is linear, with a beginning, middle, and end.
Each element in a good direct mail package reinforces the offer and
call to action, so even if two different people read the package elements
in a different order, all of the elements relate and ultimately lead to the
call to action. This is true, by the way, of other direct mail formats as
well, such as self-mailing pieces and catalogs. Direct mail is logical,
linear, and integrated. Even telemarketing calls and direct response tele-

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vision commercials are logical and linear, with a beginning, middle, and
end, but then we come to the Web.

The Web Defies Logic

Admittedly, many Web sites are logically designed to lead you through
from beginning to end, yet the Web site is faced with a technical limita-
tion that is paradoxically its most unique strength. Web sites need to be
nonlinear so that each visitor can have immediate access to the majority
of the information on a site. This is essential because the Web site visi-
tor sees one “page” at a time on the computer screen, yet the Web site
has many pages that must be served up to the visitor. How does the
visitor find out what is on those pages?
The functional way most Web sites deliver this nonlinear information
is through a home page. On that home page, the visitor typically will see
almost every area or section of the site’s contents at the same time. It is
more like a book’s table of contents than anything else is, but not quite,
because the sections on the home page are nonlinear and modular. You
could flip through the sections of a book and move from page to page,
but most readers still tackle a book from beginning to end.
The Web site, on the other hand, invites nonlinear reading. The home
page encourages movement and flexibility, even though each section has
its own purpose and its own content. It is a very different look and feel.
Actually, the difference is startling. With every other direct response
medium, the direct marketer makes a concerted effort to progressively
disclose information to the suspect, prospect, or customer in a logical,
sequential pattern.
With the Web, however, the visitor is exposed to everything simul-
taneously. He or she has the ability to see it all, at least on the surface, at
one time, from this giant control panel called the home page, and here is
the important point:

The visitor is no longer directed by the marketer—instead, the

visitor does the directing.

You could make a case that a direct mail catalog provides the same
flexibility. In some respects, it does. The reader can thumb through the
pages of a catalog randomly, and its contents page is kind of like a Web
site’s home page. However, when the visitor to a Web site browses pages,
he or she is exposed to far more “eye candy” and interactivity than with

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a printed catalog. A Web site is not physically bound, as a catalog is, so

the nonlinear nature is more evident—a benefit as well as a feature.
With a Web site, the visitor has a new level of control over the man-
ner in which information is delivered. He or she can randomly move
around the Web site, starting anywhere, going anywhere, finishing any-
where, or not finishing at all. In fact, a visitor can leave a page or an
entire site very quickly, go to other pages at numerous other sites, and
return just as quickly.
Web pages become almost separately interconnected elements, func-
tioning as tiny bits of marketing information in a much greater scheme
of things, sometimes melding from one marketer’s site to another. This
presents a challenge for Internet marketers—to keep visitors on your
site and to remind those visitors of exactly where they are: on your site.
It also means that there is a whole new dynamic in Internet market-
ing. With the power in the hands of the prospect or customer, the mar-
keter needs to be mindful of that individual’s wants, needs, likes, and
dislikes. Instead of randomly receiving promotional messages from you,
as might be the case with direct mail or advertising, the Internet pros-
pect or customer expects you to either ask permission to communicate
or to know when to make a contact.
The Internet promotes one-to-one communications intimacy and
encourages a correspondence relationship between the marketer and
the end user—the kind of relationship that demands something of one
another. This is conceptually different from traditional marketing, and
marketers need to deal with the implication.
With the Web, it is almost as if the visitor is a bumblebee, moving
from flower to flower, creating his or her own unique formula for con-
suming marketing information—a formula designed to meet his or her
uniquely individual needs. It is truly randomized, because things just do
not happen when you expect them to, and a visitor may want to inter-
act with you at any time during the process.

Intersponding: A New Response Model

In fact, I believe the Internet creates an entirely new response model,

which we can call intersponding—a new kind of interactive, instant,
interspersed pattern of responding. To see what this means from a mar-
keting perspective, let us go back to that Web site visitor. There he or

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she is, navigating through a Web site, uniquely and freely. Perhaps no
two visitors move through a Web site in exactly the same way.
The visitor goes from place to place, consuming bits and pieces of
information as the need arises, sometimes at random, sometimes in logical
order. Because Web browser software makes it so easy to go from page
to page with Back and Forward buttons, the pattern may be quite com-
plex. That is a good reason for your Web site to provide navigation
elements that remain on pages appearing after the home page, so that
the visitor can continue to move with total freedom from section to
section, yet recall the section for reference. It is just as easy for the
visitor to print an occasional page when the need arises.
The Web makes it easy to select and copy text and graphics from
other Web sites—and even to obtain the HTML (HyperText Markup
Language) source code for each Web page with a simple click of the
mouse. This is unheard of, and unthinkable, in any other medium! It
provides a level of insider access to a Web site visitor (who could just as
easily be your competitor as your customer). It puts the power of not
just easy information access but easy information duplication in the
hands of the individual.
In sum, the Web offers a single unique individual a very unique, per-
sonal way of interacting with information on your Web site or through
one-to-one e-mail communication. In a very real sense, the information
this person receives is being individualized, because the visitor is request-
ing and receiving it in just the way he or she wants it to be delivered.
The level of individualized information will intensify even further as
databases are used to enhance Web sites. With database marketing, the
marketer will be able to capture information about how the visitor is
using the Web site and use that information to structure and refine the
information flow to the visitor. When the visitor returns to the Web site,
the Web site will “know” the individual’s likes and dislikes and feed
personalized information to him or her by creating Web pages on the fly
that include uniquely personalized content.
This is already a built-in aspect of a growing number of sites on the
Web, which allow you to individualize or personalize pages by provid-
ing profile data. The data is analyzed by a database engine. Web pages
are then created just for you. You can “pick them up” at the Web site,
or have them “pushed” to your computer in some cases. Try it yourself.
Go to www.individual.com and create an individualized news page, just
the way you want it. Or visit any of the larger commercial sites or por-

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tals and find the My Page feature for a completely personalized experi-
ence on each site.
Now, what about the responding part of intersponding? Well, this is
truly interesting: If a Web site is set up correctly, the visitor can instantly
respond at any time along the way—whether it seems logical or not to
respond at that point. Some Web sites embed e-mail response areas so
that visitors can click an underlined address, type in an inquiry or re-
sponse, and send it immediately. Many Web sites go beyond that, how-
ever, by using interactive forms. These forms collect basic information
about the visitor—name, address, phone number, and so on—and some-
times ask qualifying questions of the visitor. Well-constructed Web sites
prominently show a link to this form on the home page and provide
multiple links to the form throughout the site. Even better, the visitor is
offered something special (good direct marketing!) for completing and
sending the form. It can be sent with a simple click of the mouse. We
will talk more about these Web response forms later.
But wait, there’s something wrong…. So far, all of this does not
sound very different from the traditional way of responding, does it?
The Web site has a form that a visitor fills out and sends—the same as
with a direct mail reply form or order form, the same as with a call to
an 800 number. What is the big deal? Remember this is not responding,
this is intersponding. There is another facet of intersponding that makes
it completely unique.

Not only can the visitor interactively respond via the Internet,
he or she can also instantly have a request fulfilled via the
Internet.

After the visitor sends the Web response form, he or she can in-
stantly and automatically

• Receive an answer that verifies the visitor’s instructions or ac-

knowledges an order,

• Receive a more detailed acknowledgment of ordering informa-

tion via return e-mail,

• Unlock or receive documents or special Web pages, personalized

to the specific needs of the visitor,

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 The Age of the “e” 39

• Download a demonstration, trial, or full version of a software

product onto the visitor’s computer for immediate use,

• Gain access to a private event or virtual seminar that offers the

visitor a free interactive learning experience, and

• Be acknowledged as a returning visitor or customer, and there-

fore be given special treatment. For example, the visitor’s name,
address, and previous ordering information can be stored by
the marketer and recalled for use by the visitor when a new
order is placed.

Each of these potential responses is an intersponse—an interactive,

instant fulfillment of the visitor’s inquiry—an immediate payback for
the visitor’s time and trouble.
Intersponding feeds the need for so many things on the part of the
prospect or customer:

• Instant gratification

• Total and immediate responsiveness

• One-to-one communication

• Personal correspondence

• The ease and convenience of an automated response

Intersponding completely changes the relationship the prospect or

customer has with the computer, the Internet, and the marketer. Even
though the prospect or customer is sitting in front of a machine and
typing on a keyboard, the response he or she receives is warm, personal,
and intimate—because it is intended just for him or her and is delivered
instantly, a direct response to an immediate need. Properly executed, it
is the ultimate in fulfillment—what everyone expects when they think
of personalized customer service and responsiveness. Ironically, it is what
good old-fashioned commerce used to be.
In the American past, there was a time when you could visit a friendly
neighborhood store and the proprietor recognized your face and knew

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your name. He or she knew your family, too, and also knew what you
liked to buy, how much you needed, and when you would probably be
back. In short, the proprietor had a relationship with you.
The proprietor was not just a store clerk, but a person. He or she
chatted with you about the weather, ordered products for you, held
them for you when they came in, and sent you on your way with a smile
when you were done shopping.
For the most part, we have relegated these kinds of personal busi-
ness relationships to the past. We have few experiences in our consumer
or business lives that replicate them. It is sad, but people just do not
seem to know whom they are doing business with anymore.
Maybe that is one more reason for the Internet’s popularity. The
Internet can, in a business relationship sense, be that proprietor. It may
be sobering to think that individuals need to go to a computer to get the
same kind of personalized attention they received from a real live store
clerk years ago, but the reality is that businesses cannot always provide
that kind of face-to-face contact anymore. Customers are all over the
world, retail establishments are depersonalized and automated, and the
cost of maintaining intense personalized relationships is high.
Perhaps it is the Internet that will facilitate the return of marketing
personalization once again.

Seven Proven Internet Marketing Strategies

In the following chapters, we will explore in detail seven proven Internet
marketing strategies you can put to work to dramatically improve your
b-to-b marketing efforts and increase profits:

1. Generating and qualifying leads with the Internet. Lead generation

and qualification is the heart of most b-to-b marketing programs.
Learn how lead practices apply to the Internet, how the Internet
can be integrated with direct mail and telemarketing, and how to
use e-mail, Web response forms, Web sites, and Web advertising to
enhance your lead generation and qualification efforts.

2. Using Internet events to promote products and services. The

Internet offers b-to-b marketers a remarkably cost-effective alter-
native to live conferences, seminars, and similar promotional

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events. In addition, the Internet can be used to promote and en-

hance traditional marketing events. See how you can create Net
events that bring qualified prospects to you.

3. Executing e-fulfillment. You can use the Internet to qualify pros-

pects and instantly fulfill their requests for information via “pull”
and “push” technologies. Find out how to create instant e-fulfill-
ment programs.

4. Building customer relationships with the Internet. Discover the

power of the Internet in developing one-to-one relationships with
customers and providing customers with superior service around
the clock. Learn how to develop a customer-driven extranet.

5. Using or establishing business communities and exchanges. See

how successful b-to-b marketers take the concept of the Web com-
munity and apply it to their own marketing programs. Learn how
to participate in business communities and maybe even build one
of your own.

6. Using the Internet to create and manage partner programs. Find

out how the Internet brings new meaning to partnering. Discover
the power of affiliate marketing programs, partner links, and
partner service sites.

7. Selling with the Internet. Learn how b-to-b marketers are suc-
cessfully launching electronic stores on the Internet, securely sell-
ing everything from books to industrial products—and generating
millions of dollars a day.

Each of these seven strategies is grounded in the fundamental prin-

ciples of direct marketing. They are timeless, recognizable concepts that
have been taken straight out of a direct marketing playbook. Internet
marketing may require a new set of practices and a new way of think-
ing, but it is, at its heart, good, solid direct marketing. Read on and see
for yourself.

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