Spamming is killing us. Well, death may be overstating the problem, but spamming is frustrating users and marketers alike and its financial impact on legitimate marketing can’t be understated.

Read rates of marketing e-mail is in serious decline. More and more users hit delete before they even glance. DoubleClick reports a 24 percent year-over-year decrease for all mail in its Q2 2005 E-mail Trend Report. That means a dramatic downturn in average campaign revenue and an industry loss of tens-of-millions of dollars compared to previous years.

The problem is spam. Spammers give all marketers a bad name. The good news is that the law is now starting to hammer some of these e-mail bandits. An Iowa judge pounded a Florida spammer, awarding $11.2 billion in damages to an Iowa ISP after it received millions of unsolicited e-mail. Yes, billion. You probably received some of the wicked e-mails from the notorious hood in question advertising mortgage and debt consolidation. Damages were calculated at $10 per illegal e-mail.

An increasing challenge, compliments of the trend wrought by spammers, is that more and more users are turning-on image blockers that turn-off images in an HTML e-mail. While spam e-mail images are turned-off, so are legitimate e-mail images.

To overcome these challenges you have to build trust with your readers which requires their permission and a transparent relationship with synchronous (two-way) communications.

Here are a few tips for overcoming these challenges:

• Get their permission.
• Double opt-in is strongly recommended.
• Opt-out option on all correspondence.
•  Privacy Policy is a must .
• Write succinct, punchy subject lines.
• Strong opening body text (non-image) emphasizing the buyer benefit.
• Third-party lists are strongly discouraged; ditto for sharing.
• Provide links to back issues and related information.
• Ensure a strong offer in every e-mail.
• Call to action should have short deadlines.
• Measure response to e-mail offers; tailor campaigns based on response.

Ultimately your e-mail success will depend largely on how well you know and understand your readers and how well you tailor your efforts based on their needs and expectations. As such, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback and to undertake surveys. Heck, try phoning a few with a polite telephone survey – you might just further strengthen a valuable relationship.

Those of us that are in the business of selling products and services to other businesses (B2B) know full well that traditional consumer marketing does not work for our business. There is no better way to waste your marketing money than on traditional advertising on radio, television or newspapers.

B2B marketers prefer to spend their money on more traditional, organic methods, but with an increasing budget directed to digital and e-mail marketing. In fact, according to a Forrester Research study highlighted by e-Marketer (B2B Marketers Shift Budgets to Online), in-person event marketing such as tradeshow participation is the number one preferred tactic of B2B marketers.

Although TV is listed as the 5^th most popular tactic, I’m sure you’d find that much of that TV advertising is targeted cable TV advertising on specialty channels such as the Money channel or MSNBC.

Of particular interest to digital strategists such as myself is that no digital marketing makes it into the top 5 tactics. After the military and education, B2B were the first early adapters of digital marketing and electronic sales. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was being used by many B2B companies before many of us had even heard of the Internet. Despite this early mover advantage into the digital world, B2B marketers have not discounted more traditional methods such as face-to-face and PR.

The good news for digital media buyers and marketers is that digital marketing –such as e-mail marketing and paid search – is being used more and more often by B2B companies and is projected to be the number two tactic of choice by 2008.

ANALYSIS

Traditional, organic marketing such as in-person events and public relations works best for many B2B organizations. Digital marketing, particularly targeted permission marketing (see Web marketing (part III): E-mail marketing ), is becoming more effective and will continue to garner more and more of the marketing pie. Increases in digital marketing budgets will continue to be at the expense of less successful media such as newspapers, printed newsletters and radio.

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Web marketing (part III): E-mail marketing

I hate spam. You hate spam. We all hate spam. Yet, just like negative political advertising during the heat of a hot campaign, it works brilliantly.

In fact, except for traditional direct marketing, there is no single more effective marketing tool.

Here are some of the numbers:

Ø       Only telemarketing has a higher ROI than e-mail (IAB)

Ø       In Q2 2005, the open rate fell to 23.6 per cent versus 2004 (DoubleClick)

Ø       Bounce rates, which were at an all time low at 7.9 percent, declined 25 per cent from 2004 rate (10.5 percent) (DoubleClick)

Ø       Orders per e-mail delivered were 0.35 percent in the fourth quarter of 2004, an all-time high and much higher than the previous records - 0.30 percent (DoubleClick – based on  2.5 billion e-mail sent)

That last number is very telling. It means there’s a sale, on average, for every 300 e-mail solicitations sent. While it depends on how you do it, the cost of sending 300 e-mail is next to nothing. And this is why e-mail marketing continues to be wildly successful despite the stigma against spam.

To be honest, the real winners are not those marketers that are spamming (though some are wildly successful), but those that undertake permission marketing.

Permission Marketing