You might say this sounds paranoid, and you would not be too wrong. The purpose of above statements, with all their intended exaggeration, is to ring a bell.

Another issue is that of audience and purpose of writings discussed here. Since they are published mostly on sites claiming to offer marketing resources for professionals, we might assume this is target audience. Still, it is very doubtful that true professionals would bother to read something entitled "Increase your sales – 10 easy tips", unless some morbid curiosity or a weird sense of humor drives them on. Why? Because they know there is nothing new under sun, those "tips" are just rewritten old principles, same content with a different cover. Taking a better look at content of "incriminating" works, one can recognize principles taught in school, now extremely summarized and simplified, written in a very accessible language level, and in most of cases presented as authors' very piece of mind. Well, if professionals are not audience, then who is? Students? They are stuck with their bulky books trying to become next Philip Kotler... Maybe business owners? No... they must have either hired someone or they got busy running business themselves, unaware of Z number of advices waiting to be read.

It means we return to first assumption, that number – entitled articles address to marketing professionals. And, hey, almost forgot to mention that author is, in most cases, a "marketing guru" (I am terrified by this guru thing!) From this point, real worries begin: since when level of professionalism lowered so much? Are we losing our creative thinking? Can't we come up with something new anymore? Do we need those cheap works to have us promoted?

... Finally, are we getting dumb?

For these reasons, we should consider Customer Service function (in its fullest and largest definition) as an essential one within e-Marketing mix.

As we can easily figure out, service (or assistance if you wish) can be performed upon any element from classic 4 P's, hence its moderating character.

4. Community We can all agree that e-Marketing is conditioned by existence of this impressive network that internet is. The merely existence of such a network implies that individuals as well as groups will eventually interact. A group of entities that interact for a common purpose is what we call a "community" and we will soon see why it is of absolute importance to participate, to be part of a community.

The Metcalf law (named after Robert Metcalf) states that value of a network is given by number of its components, more exactly value of a network equals square of number of components. We can apply this simple law to communities, since they are a network: we will then conclude that value of a community rises with number of its members. This is power of communities; this is why we have to be a part of it.

The customers / clients of a business can be seen as part of a community where they interact (either independent or influenced by marketer) – therefore developing a community is a task to be performed by any business, even though it is not always seen as essential.

Interactions among members of such a community can address any of other functions of e-Marketing, so it can be placed next to other moderating functions.

5. Site We have seen and agreed that e-Marketing interactions take place on a digital media – internet. But such interactions and relations also need a proper location, to be available at any moment and from any place – a digital location for digital interactions.

Such a location is what we call a "site", which is most widespread name for it. It is now time to mention that "website" is merely a form of a "site" and should not be mistaken or seen as synonyms. The "site" can take other forms too, such as a Palm Pilot or any other handheld device, for example.

This special location, accessible through all sort of digital technologies is moderating all other functions of e-Marketing – it is then a moderating function.

6. Security The "security" function emerged as an essential function of e-Marketing once transactions began to be performed through internet channels.

What we need to keep in mind as marketers are following two issues on security:

- security during transactions performed on our website, where we have to take all possible precautions that third parties will not be able to access any part of a developing transaction;

- security of data collected and stored, about our customers and visitors.

A honest marketer will have to consider these possible causes of further trouble and has to co-operate with company's IT department in order to be able to formulate convincing (and true, honest!) messages towards customers that their personal details are protected from unauthorized eyes.

7. Sales Promotion At least but not last, we have to consider sales promotions when we build an e-Marketing strategy. Sales promotions are widely used in traditional Marketing as well, we all know this, and it is an excellent efficient strategy to achieve immediate sales goals in terms of volume.

This function counts on marketer's ability to think creatively: a lot of work and inspiration is required in order to find new possibilities and new approaches for developing an efficient promotion plan.

On other hand, marketer needs to continuously keep up with latest internet technologies and applications so that he can fully exploit them.

To conclude, we have seen that e-Marketing implies new dimensions to be considered aside of those inherited from traditional Marketing. These dimensions revolve around concept of relational functions and they are a must to be included in any e-Marketing strategy in order for it to be efficient and deliver results.