• by Masha Geller , April 15, 2002

I never thought I’d see the day. As the IAR reported today, “more than half of the direct marketing firms doing business online are seeing positive returns on investment from their Web presence.”

That’s according to the latest edition of the Direct Marketing Association’s annual State of the E-Commerce Industry Report.

The DMA polled its online and offline members and its subsidiary, the Association of Interactive Marketing, and found that 55% of respondents' websites were making a profit, either from direct sales or from the use of information gathered from visitors.

The DMA also discovered that website publishers haven’t lost their optimism. Of those not currently making a profit, more than half (55%) expect to be making money within the current year and 17% estimate having a positive return from their sites in 2003.

The reports also says that consumer companies have fully embraced online transactions as an added sales venue. The DMA found that approximately seven in ten (71%) consumer direct marketers can conduct their financial transactions online. Conversely, only 20% of b-to-b marketers utilize their Web sites for online transactions. This brings the overall percentage of direct marketers conducting online transactions down to 41%.

In total, respondents indicate their average order size to be $90. This figure increases substantially for those direct marketers targeting their site to the B-to-B segment ($350).