Emarketing E-Marketing -- Evolving Techniques Today\'s Virtual

Emarketing

e-Marketing -- evolving techniques

Today's virtual marketplace is growing increasingly competitive. This is due to the influx of new products and also the new ways advertisers have devised to market those products. Using the Internet for advertising and to deploy innovative marketing strategies has become almost ubiquitous for cutting edge products and companies in today's day and age. However, the use of such e-marketing techniques as banner advertising, popup windows, permission marketing, loyalty programs, and email marketing has note proved universally effective.

Banner advertising and popup windows

The most popular form of advertising on the Internet's World Wide Web is currently banner advertising, with popup windows ranking a close second. With banner advertising, a banner of graphic image and link are displayed on a highly trafficked web site. The visitors to that site see the banner when the page loads. The banner commonly advertises a complementary product, service, or another web site. Popup advertisements are often similar in content to banner advertisements; only the advertisement's images 'pop up' as individual windows from the site. (Kristula, 1996)

Pros

Banner advertising shows the advertisement's image near the top of the web page in a way that is visually less forceful to a viewer than the imagery of popup advertisements. However, in contrast to popup advertisements, banner advertisements cannot be blocked as readily with technology, as many pop-ups currently are by existing software. With a paid banner advertisement, the advertisement is usually the only banner ad that appears on the page. This type of banner space is usually sold by impressions, or banner views, although it is sometimes sold by click-thru, when the user clicks on the banner for more information. (Kristula, 1996)

Cons

A moving or rotated banner is usually a more effective way of advertising, but customizing the rotator or rewriting such a design can be challenging. If an advertiser is independent, this can be difficult to orchestrate.

Companies using it

On AOL most recently, a mortgage company called NexTag advertised its most recent rates via a banner. (http://startpage.aol.com/) Medical encyclopedias online frequently contain links to drug companies or diet companies with banners. (http://health.aol.com/) As with pop-ups, the audiences for banners are broad, yet somewhat segmented by age and demographic, depending on the web page the advertiser selects as a link.

The future

Although these banner and popup techniques are likely 'here to stay,' their appeal is similar in scope to broadsides in targeted magazine publications, and there is little assurance that they will be read -- however, the advantage with banners, although less ostentatious in design than pop-ups, is that they can seem informative and blend in with informative content, gaining credulity. Banner advertising payout rates have definitely decreased over the last couple of years, but that also means that web masters looking for a flexible and reliable way of selling banner ad space will increase their rented advertising space and thus lessen the effective of both the banners and the pop-ups on their sites. (Bloch, 2005)

Permission Marketing

In contrast to the ubiquity of banners and pop-ups, permission marketing is often advertising information masquerading as content, and advertising that the viewer must actively decide to access and search out via pointing and clicking, usually when seeking information about a subject area.

Pros

The pros of this form of advertising are that this type of advertising counteracts the innate cynicism towards marketing that has perhaps inevitably developed as a result of the falseness in advertising copy and the greater awareness of such lack of truth in advertising over the past decades. It is able to be quite specifically directed to interested customers, as opposed to purely casual users and has an informative as well as a marketing aspect.

Cons

The cons of permission advertising are that the user must consciously click to enter the site, to seek information as well as to be exposed to the advertising, thus limiting the scope of the audience.

Web sites using the technique

Website such as Charles Atlas (http://www.charlesatlas.com/) and e-diets cater to a built-in market desire for fitness and weight loss, or in other cases, to learn about making money. By capitalizing on consumer insecurities, such sites are able to draw traffic from information-seeking customers, along with the permission advertiser's inclusion of choice bits of information that can only be comprehended in full, should the user decide to purvey the service. Or, in the words of one individual selling his book on the technique, "To get four free chapters, just type your e-mail address in this box and hit submit. We'll send you four chapters by return e-mail." (Godin, 1999)

The future

The future of this technique seems promising for some specific enterprises, specifically service of highly content-based enterprises, where information can act as a teaser to already interested consumers, however it is not applicable to a wide range of industries.

Loyalty Programs and bulk emails

Loyalty programs give rewards to customers based upon the revenue they spend at a company, or in exchange for product loyalty -- on the Internet they are frequently used to entice brick and mortar product users to make use of online features as well. Bulk email mimics the traditional mass mailing, only via the worldwide web, usually with a link to a site.

Pros

Loyalty programs like mass e-mailings are familiar to customers, especially older customers, and mimic traditional rewards programs such as frequent flier miles on airlines or supermarket value cards. Mass e-mailings also reach a wide array of customers, as does the appeal of gaining 'points' or rewards for loyalty

Cons

Loyalty programs are an expensive proposition from the company's point-of-view. In the supermarket industry, where loyalty programs are relatively mature, they cost from 1% to 1.5% of market revenue. In other industries the programs can cost between 2% and 5%, From a company's perspective, it can be as long as18 months before an organization starts to see return on a loyalty program, time Internet companies frequently do not have. Also, customers can grow angry if a non-profitable program is withdrawn after they have made an investment. (Beal 2004) Customers are apt to mistrust bulk emails, and their familiarity or appearance as Spam can either bore or alienate the potential customer.