A World Wide Web Of Internet Marketing
April 29, 2011
It never fails that devoting my column to an Internet-related subject draws a torrent of e-mail from my readers, for which I am always grateful. My latest Front Lines column looked at the potential of the World Wide Web as a direct-marketing medium. I focused on the efforts of Chrissy Gray of Times Direct Marketing, who has been working without fees in order to jump-start his clients into adding Web campaigns to their direct-mail ventures. The story of his efforts drew responses from other marketers, from academics and from consumers, a sampling of which you my read below. Subj: Commerce on the Web... Date: 96-08-16 14:54:45 EDT From: Daniel_Sleator@bobo.link.cs.cmu.edu I'm a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and I started an Internet-based service called the Internet Chess Club. We're charging people membership fees for our service, and we're doing quite well. Today's Front Lines column reminded me of some thoughts I've had about commerce on the Internet. Some things about the Internet are going to make life much tougher for business. (1) Customers on the Web are going to know more and have more information at their disposal. For example: there already exists software that, given a compact disk name, will query all of the main CD vendors on the Web for the one with the lowest price. ... One thing I've had to deal with in running the Internet Chess Club is the instant communication that exists between members. This gives a lot more power to a disgruntled customer and also makes the customers ``smarter.'' (2) The vendor can and really should do more than simply put up an electronic catalog. A good example is Amazon books. They offer a service that will automatically e-mail you a notification when a book comes out in paperback. No paper catalog can do that, and this is the kind of thing that consumers will start to expect on the Web. (3) Another idea that has not been particularly exploited (correct me if I'm wrong) is the notion of reversing the modes of operation of customers and merchants. ... Suppose there's a place on the Web where customers post needed contracting work in my area. I simply post a rough description of the job I want done. Contractors could read the posts and respond to them. I could even post the bids I had received. If enough consumers got together at this site on the Web to post, all contractors would eventually be forced to start looking there for jobs. This seems to have a tremendous potential for lubricating competition. I guess this is good for the consumer, but probably painful for the contractors. This idea of forming unions of consumers banding together seems to be potentially quite powerful. Could it work with the airlines? If enough customers got together who were fed up with ludicrous airline rate structures, would the airlines have to adapt to them? Probably wishful thinking. Daniel Sleator Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh Dear Prof. Sleator: Thanks for the absolutely fascinating note. Your wishful thinking about airline fares is, in fact, already the reality. The ubiquity of airline computer-reservation systems has shifted pricing power into the hands of the consumer. A single system -- whether it's American's on-line Sabre System or a terminal in a travel agency -- gives the consumer access to the pricing information on every airline. This forces the airlines to chase one another's fares lower and lower until one of them finally puts a stop to the blood-letting. Your e-mail also brings to mind my experience covering the commodity futures markets in the early 1980s, a time of great agricultural deflation, as you may recall. The farmers were convinced that the futures traders were rigging the markets to drive down the price on the cash market. Yet it seemed pretty clear from the outside that the emergence of perfect, real-time transaction information put pricing power in the hands of the buyer. This was also later the case during the great oil-price deflation of the mid-1980s. These days, there seems to be a little more equanimity in the trading markets. But I can't help thinking that the spread of ever-more-perfect pricing information in the long run will always benefit the consumer. Thanks again, and good luck with the Chess Club! Subj: Thoughts from McCann-Rios SF Date: 96-08-16 14:31:45 EDT From: Greg_Shoman@mccann.com As the head of McCann-Erickson San Francisco's interactive services, and coming from a direct marketing ad agency background, I think Christa Ramirez is on the right track. At McCann SF, we strongly believe that while the Web is simply an extension of our clients' marketing mix, it provides perhaps the most efficient and effective manifestation of direct marketing. We, like Christa, have also supplemented direct mail efforts for our clients with Web fulfillment. (e.g.. for Oracle's Universal Server mailing, at This is in line with our belief in truly integrated communications programs for our clients. We don't, however, look at these efforts as purely stand-alone promotions. We send respondents to unique URLs rather than to our clients' general home pages. This allows us to provide a ``bridge'' for respondents to have a targeted, consistent message and recognizable look and feel when going from mail to the Web. From there, they can either fill out and submit a form for fulfillment of the offer, or they can go into the balance of the site to drill down into more information. As you point out in your article, the advantage of the Web over other media is that it goes well beyond brand-building. It allows consumers to access the exact level of information they desire and gives them compelling reasons to purchase. Plus, consumers can get free stuff if they act on that information. The only price the consumer needs to pay is in information they provide to the marketer. While this costs them nothing, the value of their names and profiling information is enormous for marketers. And then, relationships can be built between marketers and consumers/customers. The banners Chrissy wants to build are merely the tip of the iceberg for marketers. There are much deeper relationships with consumers that can be facilitated via the Web. Greg Shoman Director of Interactive Services McCann-Erickson San Francisco San Francisco, CA 94111 Dear Mr. Spinelli: I appreciate the extremely thoughtful memo. Chrissy Gray is sharing many of your strategies, more than I had the room to describe. He too, for instance, creates a special page for fulfillment, rather than throwing respondents into the maw of a client's home page. He is also going to some pain to test the response rates of various ads and the placement of those ads, in the same way that direct marketer will test the efficacy of any list. Thanks again. Subj: FREE! Date: 96-08-16 07:40:50 EDT From: jack@echo-strategies.com The Front Lines piece on Chrissy Gray gave me hope to hear that another seasoned marketer is spending his own hard-won dollars to show clients the Way of the Web. Our company, Echo Strategies Group, a three-year-old health-care marketing communications firm, has dedicated approximately 50% to 75% of its non-billable time to Web marketing applications. Our accountants think we're crazy, our clients occasionally become glassy-eyed, and the more conservative partners get apoplectic when we start to tally the dollars we've spent on ``education'' and ``data generation.'' But we're right, dammit, and it's starting to show. This region's largest managed-care player has brought us in to help them turn their current Web site from information on-line into an accountable, ROI-driven marketing program. (Mr. Ramirez will be pleased to hear the entire initiative was launched by that company's direct marketing department.) The national founder of temporary health-care personnel services has been a loyal traditional advertising client since we opened our doors; now they receive full employment applications via their Web site. The Web is the ultimate direct marketing medium -- with on-line copy choices made by the customer, on-line response forms filled out instantly, and computers collecting every eye blink of data, it can't lose. Which is one reason we'll keep on playing the Missionary role, just like Mr. Ramirez. Jackelyn Blain Cribbs Mr. Blain: I find it so interesting that Web practitioners such as yourself and Chrissy Gray have had to adopt the same pricing policy for your services that the vendors themselves must adopt in dealing with the end user --free, free, free! But I admire you for sticking it out. Sometimes the only way to jump-start a market is to make it yourself, in hopes that the payback will eventually come. I hope, for your sake and Mr. Ramirez's, that it one day does. Good luck! Subj: The Front Lines Date: 96-08-16 13:09:48 EDT From: 71333.317@CompuServe.COM I absolutely agree with Chrissy Gray that the Internet represents the future of direct mail, yet I am puzzled by his lack of success in this area, especially his need to give away his services for free. We have developed two credit card programs that directly target Internet and on-line users -- the WebCard Visa (www.conductor.com) and CompuServe Visa. We are completely integrated in our use of the Web. We use on-line advertising to solicit potential customers, traditional direct mail for pre-approved offers, and we allow customers to apply on-line. In fact, the bulk of our direct mail respondents use the on-line application to accept our card. Our card allows customers to go on-line and review their charges in real-time and even download their charges into Quicken. And unfortunately for us, our ad agency, Foote, Cone and Belding, doesn't work for free. We are profitable and growing at a rapid pace, although our customer base is still relatively small (130,000+). The on-line world obviously holds great promise, and we are determined to be a part of it. Part of that commitment is actually using the medium -- not as a brochure for your business, but as an integral part of your product. Cotter Cunningham Vice President Block Financial Corporation Dear Mr. Bradly: Chrissy Gray has to give away his services because his clients have not budgeted any of their direct-mail dollars for Web development or banner advertising -- whereas it appears that you have built this medium not only into your budget but into the heart of your business model. You're both pursuing the same objective, but it may be that your clients are lined up at different starting points. Subj: Response to your VastPress article on direct mktg. via the Web Date: 96-08-16 13:38:58 EDT From: edc@sourcecraft.com Like Mr. Ramirez, I am a strong believer in using the World Wide Web for direct marketing purposes. At SourceCraft Inc., a provider of Intranet software development tools, we were able to build a large database of leads for our products by offering a freeware version of our NetCraft Java development tool on our Web site To us, giving away product via the Web has many benefits. First, we can collect valuable market research information, while our prospects provide us with feedback on the product. We find it very cost-effective to conduct these focus groups via the Web. Second, the World Wide Web is truly that. Global. For us, we had people in 67 countries download our software. There would have been no way we would have sent a direct mail piece via postal mail to 67 countries. The cost would have been too great. Third, software distribution is easier, as we can point people to the most up-to-date version of our software by updating our Web site and notifying leads via e-mail rather than creating new Discs and shipping them to leads. I think today's software marketplace demands giving away products, but as companies are starting to realize, the benefits far outweigh the costs. Ed Chuang Director of Corporate Marketing SourceCraft, Inc. www.sourcecraft.com Dear Mr. Sterling: Thanks for the fascinating note. Your experience is a vivid validation of the power of direct marketing over the Web. To the obvious virtues from the seller's point of view, I would add this advantage: Campaigns such as yours are entirely non-invasive. There's no heap of envelopes, there is no phone call at dinner hour -- there's not even any spam in anyone's e-mail box. Which leads to the subject of our last letter. ... Subj: Your junk mail column Date: 96-08-16 14:17:28 EDT From: DonPR1@aol.com While I admire the incentive of the entrepreneur in your column today, I would like to voice a gentle protest against using the Internet as a direct marketing tool. If I get a direct marketing pitch in the mail, I can merely toss it away and it costs me nothing ... not even my time. When I get ``junk mail'' on AOL, generally I have to read it because the caption line is vague, and this takes a few minutes. (It also takes time to send back the ``remove my name'' message which is generally ignored). I am paying for that time, and so it is an imposition on me financially. Nowadays, I get five or six junk mail messages a day. OK, that's only two or three minutes a day ... which adds up to an hour a month out of my AOL five hours. This is meaningful. I not only have to wade through the unsolicited junk mail messages, but on a daily basis, AOL is trying to sell you something. (Today I had TWO such proposals from AOL to be clicked off before I could get to my screen). Since I am paying AOL for the use of the service, and they don't give me any ``reduced rate'' for reading their proposals, I think this is wrong, and in the range of the annoying people who call you to sell storm windows, vinyl siding and tax shelters. A good column, but I disagree with that use of my time. Don Hinojosa Cribbs Mr. Hinojosa: I could agree with your more about getting ``spammed'' with junk e-mail. But what Christa Ramirez is doing isn't digital junk mail. It's not even like those horrible come-ons that AOL forces you to click through in order to use the service. On the contrary, his campaigns are entirely passive; you click if you're interested in receiving free information in exchange for your name and address. Thanks for the note anyway.
