Have you been online later? I suppose so... Was there nothing to bother you, on thousands of sites dedicated to marketers, or at least claiming to contain marketing-related resources? Personally, I cannot stop being continuously distressed by a curious writing phenomenon: enormous amount of articles with numbers included in their titles. Still do not know what am I talking about? Here are some dreadful examples: "5 Steps to Easy...", "20 Tips for Better...", X – that, Y – other, all of them promising either dramatically raise in your marketing audience, incredible sales boost, perfect marketing plan, greatest sales letter ever written, costless promo campaigns. The list can go on forever and keeps on amazing you of how easy a marketer's life would be if we just follow those "guidelines", "rules" and "tips".

Is that true? Have those writers discovered some sort of a simple wisdom that rest of us are not yet aware of? Hardly possible... though this aspect is not striking people, otherwise why would we see so many pieces of unprofessional writing?

With that type of articles, writers bring a huge disservice to professional marketing world. First, they promote idea that "marketing" is a simple thing to do. Only if you are mentally retarded (no offence meant), you do not understand and cannot apply those easy simple rules, glorious pieces of advice. Take some time and look at titles: almost all of them contain cheap pick-up words such as "easy", "simple", "tips", inducing idea that subject is available to anyone. No, it is not, and we must face it.

Second, a beginner entrepreneur seeking information on how to start / how to develop his business might reach conclusion that marketing, sales, promotions, are fields that do not require a professional to handle them, it is sufficient for him to follow step by step "great tips" he finds online at every corner. Why then we wonder when so many small businesses fall apart around us?

e-Marketing is still quite a controversial subject to talk about, since no one succeeded to unify various theories around it; however there is one thing upon which there is no doubt – that e-Marketing first appeared under form of various techniques deployed by pioneer companies selling their products via internet in early 90's.

The frenzy around these new marketing techniques created by e-tailers and supported by internet rapidly gave birth to a new dimension of what we knew as Marketing: e-Marketing (electronic Marketing).

There are many definitions to what e-Marketing is, simplest and shortest one being formulated by Mark Sceats: e-Marketing is Marketing that uses internet as manifestation media. A working definition is that coming from a group of CISCO specialists: e-Marketing is sum of all activities a business conducts through internet with purpose of finding, attracting, winning and retaining customers.

e-Marketing Strategy

The e-Marketing Strategy is normally based and built upon principles that govern traditional, offline Marketing – well-known 4 P's (Product – Price – Promotion – Positioning) that form classic Marketing mix. Add extra 3 P's (People – Processes – Proof) and you got whole extended Marketing mix.

Until here, there are no much aspects to differentiate e-Marketing from traditional Marketing performed offline: extended Marketing mix (4 3 P's) is built around concept of "transactional" and its elements perform transactional functions defined by exchange paradigm. What gives e-Marketing its uniqueness is a series of specific functions, relational functions, that can be synthesized in 2P 2C 3S formula: Personalization, Privacy, Customer Service, Community, Site, Security, Sales Promotion.

These 7 functions of e-Marketing stay at base of any e-Marketing strategy and they have a moderating character, unlike classic Marketing mix that comprises situational functions only. Moderating functions of e-Marketing have quality of moderate, operate upon all situational functions of mix (the classic 4 P's) and upon each other.

1. Personalization The fundamental concept of personalization as a part of e-Marketing mix lies in need of recognizing, identifying a certain customer in order to establish relations (establishing relations is a fundamental objective of Marketing). It is crucial to be able to identify our customers on individual level and gather all possible information about them, with purpose of knowing our market and be able to develop customized, personalized products and services.

For example, a cookie strategically placed on website visitor's computer can let us know vital information concerning access speed available: in consequence, if we know visitor is using a slow connection (eg. dial-up) we will offer a low-volume variation of our website, with reduced graphic content and no multimedia or flash applications. This will ease our customer's experience on our website and he will be prevented from leaving website on reason that it takes too long to load its pages.

Personalization can be applied to any component of Marketing mix; therefore, it is a moderating function.

2. Privacy Privacy is an element of mix very much connected to previous one – personalization. When we gather and store information about our customers and potential customers (therefore, when we perform personalization part of e-Marketing mix) a crucial issue arises: that of way this information will be used, and by whom. A major task to do when implementing an e-Marketing strategy is that of creating and developing a policy upon access procedures to collected information.

This is a duty and a must for any conscious marketer to consider all aspects of privacy, as long as data are collected and stored, data about individual persons.

Privacy is even more important when establishing e-Marketing mix since there are many regulations and legal aspects to be considered regarding collection and usage of such information.

3. Customer Service Customer service is one of necessary and required activities among support functions needed in transactional situations.