Online Marketing, web-marketing and i-marketing is together known as Internet Marketing. And when the goods and services are sold online, it is called e-Marketing or Search Engine Marketing.The media has been connected with the audience worldwide through the internet. Internet Marketing has an interactive nature through which, this medium can bring out responses and provide immediate responses anywhere in the world.Designing, developing, promoting and selling products online are the central features of Internet Marketing. In this process, media gets to play a major role in as its present through the various stages of customer engagement and awareness cycle during search optimization, search engine marketing, banner ads for specific websites, web 2.0 strategies and email marketing.There are various forms of internet marketing. One of them is called e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing is a type of straight marketing which uses email to communicate the with the target audience. Emails are sent by merchants to its current or previous customers to enhance relationships and their loyalty. Emails can also be sent to acquire new customers or to convince new customers to buy something instantly. The researchers have estimated that the firms in the United States alone spend around $300 million per year on email marketing.Search engine marketing or SEM is the most effective method of Internet Marketing. In this form marketing, search engine optimization, contextual advertising, paid placement and paid inclusion is used to promote a website by increasing its visibility in the search engine result pages.The North American advertisers used up to $13.5 billion on search engine marketing in 2008. Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the largest SEM vendors. SEM has grown faster than not only the conventional methods of advertising but also other methods of Internet Marketing.
Email marketing software is another form of Internet marketing. In this form of Internet Marketing, a computer application is used to send mass emails to target markets. This software generally has a database, which stores campaign statistics, contact information and message history. The interface offers characteristics needed to operate an email campaign such as contact entry, message sending, reporting and contact importing. In the US, these Software packages are available free as well. Major companies pay thousands of dollars to organizations specializing in providing solutions for mass marketing email campaigns.This form of Internet Marketing increases the tempo of direct marketing as it sends personalized e-mail to current and prospective customers. A poll conducted by Gallup found that nearly 67% of Internet users send, forward or receive emails normally. Other online activities such as downloading music, shopping or reading blogs are outranked by emailing. There are schedulers in email marketing software, which are designed to send emails routinely. This facility removes any possible delays and the marketers can adhere to their marketing plans.Companies engaged in internet marketing have the advantage of calculating statistics quickly and inexpensively. The organizations can easily conclude, which offer was more tempting to the customer. These results can’t be extracted in billboard marketing.