E-commerce today is enjoying the fastest growth rate of any business sector because, among other things, it is fast, convenient and cost-effective! Consider just a couple of examples I heard a consultant from Arthur D. Little present recently on CNBC:

1) A typical banking transaction, which costs one dollar, will only cost one cent when conducted over the Internet! 2) A typical broker's transaction, which costs $150, will only cost $6 when conducted over the Internet!

Do you wonder why e-commerce, which is a direct result of Internet marketing, is experiencing explosive growth?

To place this extremely vital part of every global business in perspective, I have asked several members of the Technology Marketing Corporation staff to share their thoughts with you. I think you will find their comments thoughtful and extremely revealing.

A member of our Web team contributed the following:

The question is not if Internet marketing will replace traditional direct marketing, but when! Such a shift will come, however, as an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one. As more of the population goes online, the new mass-marketing vehicle is propelled to new heights at the expense of traditional direct marketing. But in order to understand the magnitude and the significance of such a shift, we must consider the factors that are the integral part of the online revolution. These are:

According to some studies, over 60 percent of American households still do not own personal computers and, of those who do, half are still off-line. While at first glance this data suggests that the online population is a minority, it helps to consider that the World Wide Web has been around for only four years and is still in its infancy. We have yet to witness a true explosion of the online presence.

The Internet is evolving as the medium of choice for many to conduct personal business. An increasing number of people (especially the younger generation) use the Web for shopping, banking, investing, making payments and communicating. This means that they are relying less on the traditional postal mail and more on the Internet.

As mentioned above, the Internet is indeed in its infancy. Issues such as security, bandwidth, reliability and general availability are being resolved by many companies and organizations around the world. This will help accelerate the acceptance of the Internet as the predominant global communication tool - the signs of which are already evident. Online marketing is also on a revolutionary path of its own, delivering dynamic, accurate and targeted information to the captive audience. This is done by improving the process of intelligent and efficient data collection to reduce the waste and the inevitable backlash against so-called "junk mail."

Online marketing has been shown to be more environmentally friendly, more cost effective and more manageable than the traditional direct marketing. It lends itself to faster and more accurate data gathering on its effectiveness, allowing the marketer to quickly adjust and improvise based on the feedback.

Online marketing can be easily supplemented and integrated with additional supporting features such as voice and video, allowing the marketer to effectively reinforce and enrich the marketing message, which makes it more appealing to its target audience.

The following thoughts were contributed by one of our editors:

Direct mail has already peaked, as evidenced by the advice commonly dispensed by direct mail gurus. Basically, all of these people advise the evermore-refined use of existing techniques, the better to outdo everyone else who (no surprise) is also using these very same techniques. The best a direct marketer can hope for is an incremental (and all-too-fleeting) improvement. Actually, that's overstated. A direct marketer would have to be incredibly creative just to maintain his current performance - or even to avoid seeing it slide too much.