Marketing Communications

THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF E-MEDIA 485

Introduction

Mass marketing communications techniques have dominated communications strategies

for decades. Gradually, direct marketing principles have been adopted that allow access to

each member of the target group on an individual basis. Th e current stage in this evolution

is the trend towards real interactivity, i.e. not only is the marketer capable of communicat-

ing with his or her target group on a one-to-one basis, but also individual members of the

target group are capable of responding to, and interacting with, the sender of the message.

Moreover, they oft en start the conversation themselves. Although some direct marketing

communication techniques also allow a certain degree of interactivity, the increasing

penetration of the Internet and mobile phones and the popularity of new interactive media

such as interactive TV and social media are changing the nature of marketing commu-

nications interactivity. Today people’s media attention is fragmenting. At the end of 2011,

mobile phone penetration in Europe exceeded 100% with an average of 120%. Country

fi gures of 2010 reveal that Finland (156%), Italy (150%), Lithuania (147%), Austria (146%),

Croatia (145%) and the UK (131%) have the highest penetration, while the following

European countries are performing at less than the EU average: Ukraine (119%), Norway

(116%), Sweden (116%), the Netherlands (115%), Romania (115%), Belgium (113%), Spain

(112%), Malta (109%), Greece, Slovak Republic and Iceland (108%), Ireland (105%),

Latvia (102%) and France (101%). Th e rest of the European countries have a penetration

less than 100%.^1 So, marketers have to follow them into the new media they are consuming.

Th e Internet is fundamentally diff erent from traditional, and even direct, marketing com-

munications tools: consumers can go all the way from awareness to interest to desire to

action, all within the same medium and within the same session.^1 Its unique characteristics

and current evolutions are further explored in the fi rst section of this chapter. Th e next

sections focus on the diff erent interactive media that a marketer can use for diff erent com-

munications objectives, with specifi c sections dedicated to interactive TV, mobile marketing

and the recent evolutions in social media. Related topics such as relationship marketing

and loyalty marketing using the Internet are also considered. Specifi c ways to measure the

eff ectiveness of Internet presence are discussed in the last section. Although the Internet has

the capability to support all aspects of company processes (including logistics, e-commerce,

e-procurement, etc.), this chapter will specifi cally focus on the use of new media for market-

ing communications purposes.

The growing importance of e-media

Th e Internet refers to the computer network infrastructure that enables the exchange of

digital data on a global scale. Worldwide, 888 million hosts^2 are interconnected through

cable and telephone networks. Th rough historical developments (the Internet was fi rst a

military tool developed to make communication possible in case of nuclear war and was

later adapted by academics to share and exchange information) and intentional eff orts,

nowadays the Internet is a unique, independent medium that is not owned or operated

by a commercial or government body. Although the Internet is also the network serving

e-mail applications, news servers (news groups), ft p (fi le transfer), gopher (pure text-based

information exchange), etc., it is oft en used as a synonym for the World Wide Web (WWW) ,

the interactive and graphical communications medium invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a

physicist at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (Cern).^3 Th e Web is characterised by

the use of hypertext mark-up language (HTML) that allows documents consisting of text,

icons, sounds or images to be shared by diff erent users, regardless of the computer operating

system they use. Th e hyperlinks (text- or image-based) make it possible to navigate quickly

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