• by Ken Liebeskind , May 8, 2002

Direct marketers are turning to the Internet to sell and advertise products, with $30 billion in sales last year and $3.4 billion spent on Internet marketing.

This from H. Robert Wientzen, president/CEO of the Direct Marketing Association, the first speaker at yesterday's Net.Marketing conference in New York, sponsored by the DMA and the Association for Interactive Marketing.

Wientzen's kick-off speech provided an overview of industry efforts to jump on the Internet bandwagon.

The growth of Internet sales will enable it to surpass catalog sales within the decade, he said, "but this is not necessarily bad news for catalogers, who have been among the earliest and most successful integrators of the Web into their marketing mix."

Indeed, multi-channel marketing was the theme of the day, with speakers discussing the way they are selling and marketing their products across different online and offline channels. Julie Hopkins, director of direct marketing and advertising at The Sharper Image, described her company's multimedia campaign to sell a new air filter system across three channels. Local and national print and radio, infomercials, catalogs, solo mailers and email were used to sell the system in stores, over the phone and online. "Sales were high and there were ten advertising vehicles for each channel," she said.

While companies like The Sharper Image are doing it right, not everyone is. Cynthia Brown, vice president of engineering at Experian, offered a how-to for online marketing programs, from acquiring names to selling products to measuring results. To improve an online marketing campaign you must improve the individual elements, which Brown identified as net delivery, open rate, click through and conversions. You can improve net delivery, the actual delivery of emails, by using change of address services that verify email addresses. You can also engage in bounce processing, resending mail to soft bounces, such as prospects whose mail boxes were full. Open rates can be improved through the use of better subject lines and personalization, she said. Click rates can be improved through personalization, better positioning of URLs and by the use of vivid images that promote clicks.

Improving net delivery, open and click rates will lead to more conversions, Brown said, showing how revenue for a campaign can be more than doubled when these elements are improved. "There are more ways to improve marketing online because you can see what they do across the purchasing path," she said.

At a morning session, Anke Audenaert, director of global market research at Yahoo!, discussed the advertising metrics of online advertising. Reach, which is obviously available at sites like Yahoo, is the first metric and the one most often sought by large advertisers who hope their online message will be seen by millions. Stickiness, or time spent online, is another important metric, because if people spend a lot of time online they will see the advertising. Loyalty is also an important metric, because if people are loyal to a site they will return to it and see the ads. Breadth of network, another metric, is important because it attracts a wide audience, since it offers wide ranging content. Brand strength, the final metric, links a site's brand to an advertiser's. "The strength and image of a site rubs off on the advertiser's brand," Audenaert said.

Each of these metrics can be used to measure the effectiveness of online advertising, with measurement being an important consideration for direct marketers who are used to measuring the results of catalogs and direct mail and still learning about the Internet.