The Cyclic Nature of Online Marketing Tools

The Cyclic Nature of Online Marketing Tools
By Al Gadbut, AcquireWeb Inc., July 19th, 2006
As sure as spring is followed by summer and succeeded by fall, online marketing
options, search, lead generation and e-mail seem to enjoy a cyclic season in
vogue.
A short six years ago when Google was just a quirky, small search engine trying to
compete in the world of Yahoo and MSN, and lead generation was just a concept,
e-mail was the sure-fire solution for marketers who rushed in with herd-like
mentality, spending large amounts of money to participate and leverage this new,
cheap and effective marketing channel.
For many, the use of e-mail cost-effectively drove sales and built brand awareness.
However, for the majority, e-mail did not deliver on the promise.
In 1999, there was very little sophistication in the market with regard to targeting
online data, but due to the perceived low cost, targeting didn't seem important.
The prevailing strategy was to send messages to a large quantity of consumers
with the hope that some of the recipients would be receptive to the offer.
At the same time, Internet service providers were struggling for solutions to handle
the rapidly increasing quantity of promotional, and in many cases, unwanted e-
mail.
The fact is many direct marketing professionals had no experience in using e-mail
to generate brand awareness and revenue. As a result, some businesses were
created with the sole purpose of exploiting the "new hope." They sold direct
marketers a lot of "dis"-services and e-mail started to lose its luster quickly with
the marketplace.
The result of e-mail's fast rise and subsequent fall was increased opportunity for
additional marketing tools and solutions such as search engine marketing and lead generation.
Search is still growing as an option but has slowed down due to the increasing
price of keywords, which prevent smaller advertisers from participating, and also
due to a serious problem of click fraud. As a result, the search "season" has faded.
Lead generation has also found its season because it delivers a high volume of
leads at a perceived low-risk/no risk proposition to the marketer thanks to its
CPA/CPL nature. Supply and demand has now affected lead generation and
marketers are finding it difficult to scale their efforts due to a lack of quality
inventory to generate leads.
Additionally, with lead generation comes a large amount of low quality leads that
either do not perform or are filtered because of an inability to meet the correct
specifications for a qualified lead.
Just as the market was casting about for a new "it-tool," acquisition e-mail
reinvented itself. E-mail now offers a unique opportunity to produce a strong,
positive ROI.
The key to e-mail's rebirth is two-fold.
First, many new opt-in files have been established with critical mass to allow a
marketer to reach a significant audience. Second, e-mail provides an opportunity
to apply direct response methodology like no other online tool.
Many marketers are now coming to realize that e-mail, as a standalone tool or part
of a multichannel marketing mix, behaves as well as every other push-based
marketing solution, such as television, radio and print. At the same time, e-mail
does not behave exactly like any other marketing solution in that it has its own
unique advantages and disadvantages.
Much like broadcast e-mail allows a marketer to cost-effectively, repeatedly reach
a broad audience, a marketer using e-mail would be negligent to not develop a
multiple touch to the same audience strategy.
Like direct mail, e-mail allows the marketer to specifically target to whom it is
going to market and the results are tied back to e-mail, creating a trackable and accountable marketing channel.
Several reports have suggested that people who receive well-targeted e-mail that
is relevant to them will engage. Furthermore, these messages lead to conversions.
What is most unexpected is that these conversions occur both online and offline,
and the conversions oft... [download for more]