How Do You Measure the Direct Marketing Effectiveness of Your Web Site?

In the early days of the Internet, counting Web site hits may have been acceptable. Today, direct marketers realize that hits are irrelevant to overall result measurement. The gross number of hits a Web page gets simply represents the physical interactions performed by one or several individuals. Hits do not tell you anything about the level or quality of response, or the leads generated or qualified. A variety of Web analysis tools and service providers at both the low end and high end now go beyond counting hits. You can use these tools and services to track and analyze a visitor’s interactions with your Web pages—sometimes right down to how long someone stays on a certain page or even a certain item on the page. This kind of information can be very useful in improving your Web site and making general judgments about marketing efforts. There are second-generation tools and services that improve analysis considerably. Now you can learn
even more about the way a visitor interacts with your Web pages.

The Wired World

Today the Internet is already a mature medium, despite its newcomer status. It is certainly the technology area with the most significant and explosive growth ever. In 1998 and 1999, the Internet’s economic impact on the U.S. economy was clearly proven just by the amount of venture capital invested in Internet companies and by the number of successful Internet company IPOs launched. By early 1999, Internet IPOs had dominated the stock market, creating another round of young bil4 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING lionaires, not unlike the software boom decades earlier. By late 1999, it was the dot-coms that moved “offline,” dominating the airwaves, feverishly snapping up television time, and grabbing national magazine and newspaper space to launch their fledgling brands. By 2000, the success of the dot-coms had started to dwindle. Many merged and many more failed, but not before the Internet had permanently become part of the fabric of American business.

The Numbers Game

Just to put things into perspective, let us examine a few of the more significant facts. By ear-end 2000, according to CyberAtlas, there were about 136 million Internet users in the United States, 27 million in Japan, 19 million in Germany, and 18 million in the United Kingdom. eMarketer’s 2001 eLatin America Report indicated that the number of Internet users in Latin America will reach close to 41 million by 2004, up from over 15 million in 2000. Canadian research firm Ipsos-Reid (www.angusreid.com) says that in 2000, there were about 350 million adults worldwide using the Internet by year’s end. The firm reported that Canada and Sweden actually led the United States in terms of percentage of the population using the Internet. According to International Data Corporation (www.idc.com), worldwide e-commerce revenue was about $350 billion in 2000 and will rise to about $3.14 trillion by 2004. GartnerGroup (www.gartner.com) says worldwide b-to-b online sales will grow from $433 billion in 2000, to $919 billion in 2001, to $8.5 trillion by 2005. The Boston Consulting Group (www.bcg.com) estimates b-to-b online revenue in Asia will be $430 billion by 2003.
The Internet’s economic impact is reported in research conducted by the University of Texas’ Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, commissioned by Cisco Systems (www.internetindicators.com). The fourth study covering the first half of 2000 reveals some fascinating statistics:
• Although dot-coms have been the center of media attention, they are not the center of the Internet economy. Only 9.6% of the firms in the study are true dot-coms, with 95% or more of their revenue from the Internet.
• For Internet economy companies, Internet revenue is one quarter the size of non-Internet revenue, but growing three times as fast as corporate revenue as a whole. In the first half of 2000, Internet economy companies generated $1 of every $5 in revenue from the Internet. Internet economy revenue is growing twice as fast as Internet economy employment. The Internet economy was proThe Age of the “e” 3 jected to produce $830 billion in revenues in 2000, a 58% increase over 1999.
• The Internet economy directly supports more than 3.088 million workers. Total employment at Internet economy companies grew 10% between the first quarter of 1999 and the first quarter of 2000. The Internet economy is creating jobs in numerous areas—and seven of every ten jobs created are traditional, not high-tech jobs. The job function generating the most Internet-related employment is sales and marketing (33%), with IT jobs at only 28%.
The report 2000 Economic Impact: U.S. Direct & Interactive Marketing

The Age of the “e”

This is the Age of the “e”; e-marketing is the new term for marketing; eCRM is the latest positioning for Customer Relationship Management; e-commerce is an integral part of selling for most b-to-b companies. Today, organizations are either e-enabled or moving toward becoming
e-businesses. Although some of us have had enough, we must acknowledge that the “e” is representative of the influence of the Internet on business, our lives, and our world. Even as we assimilate the Dot-Com Crash of 2000–2001, we can be sure that the Internet’s impact is long term and sustainable. Before we delve into specific strategies, we need to examine the marketplace, so Chapter 1 sets the stage for the rest of this book. Here we look at some important statistics, consider the Internet’s role in the b-to-b world, and explore the growing importance of the Internet as a gateway to global marketing.