She stresses that email is already one of the most important Internet applications and it is only a matter of time before it becomes one of the most important channels for marketing as well. Forrester Research, one of the leading companies in Internet research, found more than 3 billion pieces of commercial email messages were sent in 1997. That number is expected to exceed 250 billion by 2002. Commercial email sounds like a great idea and appears to be a progressive and simple marketing tool. It is, but it has some pitfalls.
Smart companies are aware that one of the most common complaints about the Internet is spam.
You have to ask yourself if your commercial email is a savvy marketing technique or plain, old annoying spam. The best thing you can do for your company s image and reputation is to make sure to the best of your ability that the people who receive your commercial email really want to hear from you. The term means simply that recipients asked you to send commercial information to them. There are many techniques for gathering those names and some are better than others. Collecting email addresses is very easy to do on the Internet.