Email is the most popular online activity - every online marketer knows that. According to Jupiter, email is used by 96% of online users, and NetValue reports that, on average, U.S. users sent and
received 75 emails this July.
That must have been the thinking behind DoubleClick's announcement last week of an impending acquisition of NetCreations for $191 million.
However,
according to the latest numbers from the IAB, the percentage of email media buys went down from 3% of total online ad revenues in Q1 of 2000 to 2% in Q2. When asked if all the hype associated with
email marketing is just that - hype - Rich LeFurgy, IAB Chairman, said that although marketers are indeed interested in email, they're wary of spending a lot of money on it.
But that will
change fast, according to the venerable Iconocast. A recent article says, "Email eliminates paper, postage and printing costs, which typically account for 60% of a direct-mail campaign. And
response rates range from 2.5% on the average broker-list campaign, to as much as 33% on highly personalized in-house list promotions. That's why leading marketers consider email to be one of the
most effective online marketing tools." Projecting NetValue's email data to the worldwide Internet population (about 300 million) suggests an annual email volume of 22.5 billion messages
(excluding browser-based email). By comparison, the total volume of U.S. postal mail this year hovers around 210 billion. Forrester says that by 2004, Americans will receive a whopping 200 billion
commercial email pitches, which will far exceed the 88 billion pieces of junk mail the U.S. Postal Service is expected to distribute by then. With all this excitement, however, no one has yet
figured out how to deal with the "spam" question.