The marketeers of this world would have everyone believe that
marketing is an exact science
But it's hard to see their point of view when you can't push open
your front door for all the pizza delivery brochures stacked up on
the doormat, and when every episode of Coronation Street is
interrupted by a phone call from some or other salesperson.
The advent of Internet-related business at last offers marketing
departments the capability to develop well-targeted, organic
campaigns that can be fine-tuned by the very customer feedback they
generate.
But there is a balancing act involved in online marketing. Do it
properly and you'll be getting the right message to the right
audience, at a fraction of the cost of offline campaigns. Get it
wrong and you'll quickly get a stark reminder of the fact that
customer loyalty has never been so fickle as it is in the online
world. Bear in mind, too, that there's a fine line between useful
information and spam.
Computer Weekly's E-Business Marketing Award was created to
highlight the best examples of online marketing by UK businesses.
The award will be presented for the best use of e-business
technology to market products or services, whether by means of an
innovatively designed Web
sites that deliver key messages particularly effectively, or a
well-targeted e-mail-based marketing operation.
Virgin Atlantic Airways won last year's E-Business Marketing Award
for its Global Miles Million Air campaign. This worldwide online
membership acquisition drive attracted more than 13,000 new members
to the airline's frequent flyer loyalty scheme, Flying Club, in
just three weeks.
The marketing campaign allowed Virgin to collect e-mail addresses
from existing and prospective Flying Club members, migrate more of
its offline members to online accounts, and clean up the company's
existing e-mail database.
Perhaps the clearest measure of the success of the campaign was the
fact that the per-person cost of acquisition was a negligible
£2.74.
This year, Computer Weekly is looking forward to receiving even
more innovative uses of e-business technology in marketing
campaigns.