The Engaged Customer: The New Rules of Internet Direct Marketing

I have adopted Brondmo's email marketing book as a text in my electronic marketing course. I recommend it as essential reading. The book takes over where Seth Godin's Permission Marketing left off. Godin's book was all about philosophy, with not too much about implementation. Brondmo's book start with a grounding in a customer-centered / one-to-one business philosophy but carries through implementation to program review, getting down to nuts and bolts. His examples and analogies ring true... .

This book is an unexpected surprise. It is packed full of strategic and tactical insights that come from actually having done it with clients, rather than just "logically theoretical".It presents an integrated approach to email RELATIONSHIP marketing (emphasis on relationship, rather than merely email marketing) without losing sight of marketing thinking in other areas and the role of alternative channels in creating synergies.With the case studies to back up a lot of the areas, it is not surprising that the author can provide a credible implementation and operations framework -- with considerations to planning & decision making, competencies, role, resources, costs, product service suppliers/vendors to develop this capability, etc. Overall, I found the book highly readable with examples of real life case studies that supported the points presented.

This book revises the direct marketing concepts for the Internet. Based on the excelent Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing (by the way, another must-have), Hans Brondmo explores how to use the e-mail as a powerful marketing tool, in order to obtain high return rates with your on-line campaings. Obvisously this book is not about spam -- which is severely criticized at this book and at other books about this subject, like Permission Marketing -- but about e-mails that your clients ask for (opt-in).

This book talks a lot about how to create "relationship capital" while mixing theory with real world examples from companies like eBags.com, Victoria's Secret, Palm. It uses both new economy and old economy companies to offer advice on ways any company can leverage the Internet to bring 1:1 relationships with customers to their companies. Pretty fast read.

Many books' subtitles are misleading. Not so with this book: "The New Rules of Internet Direct Marketing" and "Email Strategies for Creating Profitable Customer Relationships." Brondmo does indeed deliver in abundance what these subtitles promise. He suggests that, "After reading this book, you will gain insight into powerful strategies and hands-on tactics for turning...initial buyers into profitable, loyal, and engaged customers." He then observes that his reader is provided with two books in one: "A guide to thinking and a guide to doing. It's organized into four parts."Part I Using Email to Engage Your CustomersPart II Taking a Strategic ApproachPart III Implementing Customer DialoguePart IV Looking Ahead"If you are an executive looking for an overview of how email marketing will impact your business, you'll want to read Parts I and IV carefully and skim Parts II and III. If you are a manager responsible for implementing and operating email marketing programs, you'll probably want to read the entire book, focusing especially on Parts II and III." He then offers a brief description of each part. Later, Brondmo offers several key points re customer orientation: data drives relevance, relevance drives engagement, relationships are at the core of customer sustainable commerce, and building trust is an imperative. He concludes the book with an assertion that "Profitability and sustainability of all Internet business hinges on engaged customers, and there couldn't be a more perfect time to get engaged with them than today.? How? You'll find the answer in this book, one of the very few published thus far which suggest the best strategies and tactics to create profitable customer relationships with Internet direct marketing.