Telephone salespeople do the same when you phone in mail orders. And no, it's not so they can let you know if you accidentally forget your car keys. Merchants are trying to tiptoe into your inbox to entice you to spend more money through an electronic dialogue, one widely regarded as the last great hope of Internet marketing. A whole new industry is springing up around e-mail, trying to automate and personalize pitches based on our shopping history and how we respond to each contact. While revenue from Internet banner ads is declining, e-mail marketing is skyrocketing.
Analysts say commercial e-mail is doubling in volume annually.
If you aren't already, you will soon be receiving more commercial e-mail than paper junk mail. If we drop a catalogue in a home and then follow up with an e-mail a few days later, we find some people are prompted to pull the catalogue out of a magazine rack and order. Our data are pretty compelling. That represents more than 10 percent of the 40 million customer names it has collected from all its stores, mail-order business and Web site. We would not send e-mail about children's apparel to someone who has never bought children's apparel.