Companies have been focused on using the Internet to market goods and services to the consumer. Many see this as the major revenue stream on the net. But there is an undiscovered El Dorado, a goldmine of opportunity that very few have begun to mine.

Traditionally, companies have tried to capitalize on the Internet by establishing a Web page where consumers can research and buy products or services on-line. These Web sites are elaborate brochures touting the company's many qualities and competencies. A few companies, like Amazon.com, and retail giant L.L. Bean, have turned these online retail brochures into huge success stories. Many companies have tried to replicate this success, with uneven results, stumbling because of a few inherent problems with the Web page.

Web pages are static. They require a potential customer to find them, and once found, to bookmark the page and forget about it.

Some have managed to mitigate these problems with direct email offers. For instance, I periodically logged on to Amazon.com to look at the latest fiction releases. Some time last year, emails from Amazon began arriving in my inbox. These emails announced new releases of fiction, and in some cases offered a discount. Links took me directly to the Web page. In some cases, I have bought books that I might never have bought, or might have bought from elsewhere. I am not alone.

The Motivation to Go Online

More than half of American adults are online. They use the Internet for two primary purposes, email and product research. Almost half of Americans now use email and more than one-third use the Internet to search for product and service information before making online purchases.

Not surprisingly, marketers have been quick to try to capitalize on this effective sales channel. Opt-In News, published by Keaton Communications, recently reported that 54.2 percent of advertisers used emails to promote their products at the end of 2001, making direct email marketing the most used retail channel on the Internet. Almost 60 percent of email marketing campaigns in 2001 were focused on retail.

The report also revealed where the undiscovered gold I previously mentioned will be found. Amazingly, only 20 percent of these companies used email newsletters, and so capitalized on the first use, but failed to make use of the second reason people log online. Email newsletters fuse the two main purposes for which people go, email and research, and it's more effective than simple email offers, which often come across as "SPAM."

But there is an even larger undiscovered mother lode. Consumers are only a portion, and a minority portion at that, of the users surfing the Internet. Nearly 80 percent of the managers and professionals in the nation use the Internet at work. 70 percent of sales, marketing, technical support and administrative workers use the Internet in their jobs. Again, the two biggest uses were email first, and research second.

Leading the Reader to Read the Newsletter

Given this, it might seem astonishing that the marketers haven