Marketers will send more than 200 billion e-mails by 2004, according to a report by Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, MA. And they will outsource strategic and technical elements of their e-mail marketing initiatives, creating a $4.8 billion e-mail marketing industry. The study also found that by 2003 the number of marketing e-mails will equal the volume of direct mail forwarded by the U.S. Postal Service, and by 2004 the average household will receive nine pieces of marketing e-mail per day, said Jim Nail, Forrester’s senior analyst for media and entertainment research. Forrester reports, however, that marketers must stop broadcasting to customers and instead begin one-to-one dialogues. They also should offer value in the form of service and ease of use instead of simply pushing products. Additionally, the depth and breadth of marketers’ relationships with customers ought to be measured by the amount of information shared, rather than by the traditional yardsticks of timing! , frequency and monetary value o f purchases.
Network
