Direct marketing on the Internet is a tricky business, one replete with pitfalls and roadblocks. But as the number of consumers increases, hopefully so will the ease in which direct marketers find ways to give consumers exactly what they want: information of value and relevance in their lives.
The Direct Marketing Association in New York conducted a survey, released earlier this year, in which 552 marketers and 570 consumers were asked about their use of new media: online services and the Internet. The results were published in the management guide, Marketing in the Interactive Age, the first type of study done by the DMA.
More than 80 percent of the marketers were using some form of new media to market a service or product, and about 52 percent were using the Internet. The only problem is that consumers have obviously not yet mastered this trick.
The DMA says that as of January 1996 only 1 percent of households had purchased from the Internet. Actual results don't seem very promising so far, since out of the 16,000 Web sites out there, about 30 percent try to sell a service or product.
The benefit for marketers, according to DMA statistics released this spring, are that cybermarketing is extremely low in cost, compared to print. An interactive start-up catalog costs under $200,000, while a printed catalog costs over $1 million.
Customized, or one-to-one, marketing saves a consumer time and gives him/her ideas for other purchases. When a consumer first comes onto a marketer's site, he/she can either browse or search for a specific item, and register with the company by being given an identification number.
The consumer fills out a mini-survey on the screen, so that the next time he/she comes on to the site, personalized offers will appear. There's no wasting time scrolling through screens to find relevant or valuable information.
Tim Fitzpatrick, vice president of corporate communications at Metromail in Lombard, Ill., says that "there's a lot of opportunity, it's still in its infancy, but we're trying to find out exactly what the opportunities are." Metromail provides services to direct marketers, creating lists, managing information and generating leads for clients.
Challenges that marketers are experiencing are security and privacy issues. Consumers may not want their names being passed onto lists to receive direct mail, and if they decide to purchase a product on the Internet with a credit card, they need to be assured that no one but the marketer will have access to that information.
LitleNet, a customer service firm in Salem, N.H., conducted research recently in which it ordered eight products on the Web. The firm received only four, with no e-mail messages or letters apologizing for the lost four products.
Judy Wolffer, director of corporate marketing at LitleNet, sums up the interactive market by saying, "OK, we have these great capabilities, now where are all the consumers?"
World Color, an interactive multi-media firm in St. Petersburg, Fla., provides construction of both electronic and non-electronic commerce (marketing a product) Web sites. They avoid the whole security issue by using a secure socket layer, a protective wall that sends all information directly back to WC.
Kim Schoubert, director of marketing communications at World Color, describes a problem that the company ex-perienced in the early stages of the inter-active catalog services that they offer. When one consumer was calling to order an item, another would be ordering on the Internet. If there was only one item left, who gets it?
World Color combined all of its resources into one database, which instituted the "whoever gets there first" theory. Schoubert says this is just one ex-ample of the "new thinking" that people have never experienced with traditional marketing. (Metromail, 630/620-2333; LitleNet, 603/894-9000; World Color, 813/573-5268; Grey Direct, 212/303-8388; Direct Marketing Association, 212/768-7277)