Boston Business Journal
By Keith Regan

It isn't easy being an e-mail marketer. After all, nearly everyone who hears the term immediately thinks about "spam," the unwanted, bulk e-mail messages that bog down electronic mailboxes.

But e-mail marketing has quietly begun to build a following among some of the largest and best-known corporations in the world. And Boston-area companies are among those helping the likes of HBO, Staples and the U.S. Senate to use e-mail.

"E-mail marketing took of because it was a silver bullet for a while," said Andrew Payne, chief executive officer of Burlington-based Revenio Inc. "But that's coming to an end. The challenge now is figuring out what's going to survive."

In fact, the initial rush to e-mail was driven by its low cost and relatively high response rates. But consumers have wised up, Payne said, and those response rates have begun to plummet, just as they did for once-popular Internet banner ads.

Revenio, which counts Boise Cascade, Agilent and Analog Device among its clients, pushes an interactive e-mail experience. Each marketing message it sends gives recipients options for how to respond.

"We think a two-way approach is what's going to work long term," he said. Whether it's the ability to talk back to marketers or simply a more tightly focused message, the goal of e-mail marketers is to get messages to stick.

While bulk e-mailers can see as many as 20 percent of recipients opt out of receiving future messages, Payne said Revenio sees a fraction of a percent choose to exit any given campaign.

Another marketing firm, E-Dialog, which is based in Lexington, and counts Staples, DoubleDay Book Clubs and the NFL among its clients, said it boasts similarly low rates of bailouts, mainly because it uses technology to refine constantly the messages being sent.

"The e-mail problem is a marketing problem," said John Rizzi, the company's president and chief executive officer. "The first solutions were all about technology and numbers. Now, we're talking about precision capabilities. It's all about learning what people want to receive."

For the NFL, that means information about a specific team. And more specific information, such as which areas of the NFL web site an e-mail recipient visits most often.

"You have to give people content they care about," Rizzi said. "If you do that, you can build a long-term relationship."

Perhaps the holy grail for e-mail marketers, however, is viral marketing. But encouraging the recipient of a commercial e-mail to forward it to friends and neighbors is not small feat.

"You have to get creative," said V.A. Shiva, CEO of EchoMail in Cambridge. "Why would someone want to get an e-mail from Dunkin' Donuts, let alone send it to a friend? But e-mail has that forward button and that's a powerful thing."

EchoMail developed a campaign for Calvin Klein that relied largely on community-building and viral marketing. The fashion company's namesake founder does not believe in the web, thinking it is too impersonal, Shiva noted.

But he does beleive in e-mail. So about three years ago, EchoMail developed what was to be a test campaign to help launch the CKOne perfume. The campaign featured soap-opera style ads with three characters. At the end of the 30-second spot, e-mail addresses for the characters appeared on the screen.

Using EchoMail's system, which enables e-mails to be automatically screened for content and tone, an automated system was set up to respond to e-mails.

The six-month test has turned into a three-year mainstay of the company's marketing platform.

"The e-mails never promoted anything," Shiva said. "It just created a sense of community."

Getting a viral marketing boost is also the goal of South Boston's BaseSix, which recently landed both AT&T and HBO as clients for its integrated marketing services.

For HBO, BaseSix is creating a web advertisement that will drive traffic to an interactive game on HBO.com. Players will be encouraged to e-mail friends to join the game.

"Everybody wants to do viral because it's the hot thing," said John Skolis, vice president and marketing director at BaseSix. "But it's not going to work unless you have a good reason for people to do it. With HBO, it's a natural fit."

As for the future, no one predicts e-mail volumes will drop. Forrester Research recently predicted a boom in the mediukm, in fact, especially as traditional Internet advertising becomes less effective.

But Forrester analyst Rebecca Ulph said e-mail campaigns shouldn't be launched lightly. "It's invasive," she said. "It requires thoughtful execution."

Those on the front lines agree. And while eDialog's Rizzi predicts that e-mail marketing of the future will include streaming audio and more one-click links enabling purchases, the botton line will be to remain on target: Any unwanted e-mail will do far more harm than good to a campaign.

"E-mail isn't like direct mail. It's an intimate medium," said Shiva. "Guys who don't get that will be out of business."