Direct marketing has long been an important tool for business and has its parallels on the internet.  Conventional direct marketing consists of performing mail drops to targeted potential customers in specific geographical areas with pre-printed marketing material. The major costs associated with this activity are in producing the marketing materials and distribution.

On the internet there is only the cost of producing the material the first time, with distribution costs being close to nothing. There are, however, some important cautions about email marketing.

One of the challenges existing for businesses to date is to work out how to strike a balance between sending customers regular messages via email and at the same time ensuring that they are not going to be accused of sending spam.

You need to focus on some short, very powerful messages that are really going to grab somebody. Think of the image of  pulling somebody through his or her monitor. You really want to get them hooked. You want to have information that is relevant and useful to their business lives.

Big companies tend to think, 'As long as it's from us, they're going to read all this stuff!' That's not the case. People have very little time. The challenge is to make quick, powerful statement messages and do it consistently.

Once you lose somebody, they're not likely to come back. Direct mail is different. For example I get certain catalogs all year. Sometimes I throw them in the trash, but that doesn't mean next time it comes I'm not going to read it. Direct mail is like that. They may not respond now, but in 3-4 months you may mail them again and they'll open it up.

It's NOT so with email newsletters! Once you have gotten the person either disinterested or angry or irritated about something you've done, it's 99.9% certain that they'll never open another one of your emails again, regardless of whether they need it or not. You have to consistently draw their attention in newsletters or it's over. It's just like changing the radio station.