Web sites may have been the first wonder of the Internet. Banner advertising may have astonished marketing mavens around the world. Streaming media might someday give us the video phones we were promised at the New York World's Fair in 1964. But the most powerful tool for marketing, the most powerful tool for branding, the most powerful tool for direct response, and the most powerful tool for building customer relationships turns out to be plain old, ordinary email. Because it's so cheap and so easy, and reaching everybody on the Internet is as simple as hitting the Send button.
Bad email is the bane of our existence.
We hate it because we love our email. A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found 83 percent of Internet users felt email was their primary reason for using the Internet. Given the choice, an overwhelming majority turned down books, radios, and televisions in favor of an Internet connection with email on a desert island. Ask a different research company and you will get a different answer for the average response rate of opt-in email campaigns. Forrester will tell you 14 to 22 percent.