Thought Balloon

For those who still don’t think the Internet is a winner takes all ecosystem, David Solomon suggests you look at Amazon, Or Zappos. Or Newegg.

As he noted at last week’s New England Mail Order Association conference in Boston, Internet Retailer reports that the top 500 sites account for a whopping 69.1% of all online sales. And the top 100 dominate 55.3% of retail.

Now, that doesn’t mean everyone else should roll up their virtual sidewalks and weep quietly, said Solomon, head of the specialty retail and direct marketing group at Lazard Asset Management. But you do need to be a smart marketer.

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For B-to-B marketer Pitney Bowes, on a corporate level e-mail isn’t about selling, it’s about awareness.

In a recent chat Dan Kohn, vice president of marketing, noted that the goal is to stay on message and keep communications integrated across media. Testing is continual, although with a branding focus, it’s hard to test things like subject lines, because you’re not plugging offers or products. more

At DMA09 earlier this week, Greg Holzwarth, senior vice president/managing director of customer information at Sun Trust Bank discussed how his company is building automated marketing campaigns around behavior-based triggers.

It’s obviously a sound idea, but one with a big hitch—typically, you can’t let the customer know you’re contacting them because of a specific behavior.

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In a roundabout way, Twitter can be a good place to sell a car.

During a luncheon keynote at DMA09 in San Diego, Scott Monty, global digital and communications manager, Ford Motor Co. talked about how his company is using social media to get consumers tweeting about—and driving—American cars.

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NPR’s “On the Media” recently reran an interesting series of stories related to the Internet, including a piece called “Smirch Engine,” about online privacy or lack thereof, and how the anonymity of the Web can cause normally polite people to behave badly.

The story discussed how disparaging posts online can seemingly live forever, and be ruinous to individuals and companies.

It makes for interesting listening. Over the years, we’ve gotten requests from people asking us to take stories out of our sites’ archives because they are unflattering to their business and pop up high in search rankings.

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Sure, direct marketers are always hearing about folks who are tired of getting tons of direct mail. Folks complain about their clogged mailboxes, put their names on do-not-mail lists and do everything but string garlic around their necks to keep the postman away.

But what about people who want more mail?

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