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Page 3 of 6 The Influence of INET-Marketing
The sheer excitement prevalent online in the early 1990s was palpable, and discussions on INET-Marketing reflect a buzzing energy about ecommerce, web design, and digital technology. Subjects are at turns informative, fascinating, and entertaining. Consider the first line of INET-Marketing's welcome message to new subscribers:
“Welcome to the Internet Marketing discussion list: the future of the Internet is before us.” Glenn went on in this Welcome message to state that, "I think one of the items of immediate concern is credit card authorization over the Internet. Any posts and information on that subject would be welcome. Another issue is, of course, the "how do you find out what businesses are on the Internet" question, or the related, "how do I tell people that we're on the Internet." Recently, I saw an ad in a wine magazine for a general audience that included a URL for a WWW site to order wine-related T-shirts. It's already seeping down to the consumer level."
A 1994 entry from the "List of Lists" indicates Fleishman's vision for INET-Marketing: The INET-MARKETING list is devoted to the discussion of marketing goods and services in an appropriate way on the Internet... The topics of this list are limitless, but should be focused around: how to reach consumers / end-users / purchasers; how to advertise and market appropriately; forums for marketing; CommerceNet's attempts to unify the business of doing business on the Net; commercial Internet "publishers" and "shopping malls"; ordering and credit card purchasing.
Consider this thread on marketing a Web site, started in July of 1994 when the list was just one month old: From: Murphy A. Sewall
Subject: Re: How to make your web page known
J. Ellsworth wrote:
"These days probably the best way to reach out is with a really good homepage…"
Craig Shaver replied:
"But how do you get the location of the home page known to the great unwashed masses on the inet? Dribble posts and lists will get you hundreds, but real marketing means you need to reach millions."
First, what good are millions if 98% is waste circulation?
Second, there isn't a fast, reliable way to expose your message to millions SOLELY within the Internet, but viewing the communications problem as a closed system is myopic. Web servers should be a component of a total communications strategy. All the means and media (print, broadcast, point-of-purchase, packaging) at an organization's disposal should be part of a coordinated marketing communications strategy. The REAL value of a presence will be creating a competitive advantage through a (relatively) inexpensive vehicle for sustaining RELATIONSHIPS with customers (which is where the real profits are made).
Murphy A. Sewall
 Such a conversation typifies the early years of Fleishman's list, where complete novices rubbed shoulders with highly trained academics; where cunning but inexperienced entrepreneurs tossed around ideas with veteran offline agency executives. It was common in this stage to experiment with brochure sites: tiny, basic Web pages that mimicked hard copy brochures. Marketing was still an open question, as today's familiar Internet commercialism had not yet fully infiltrated the early utopia. Preliminary marketing methods included directory pages, bulletin boards, banner ads, newsgroups, and email lists. Search engines were still developing, and manual submissions were a requirement. All these topics are covered in surprising depth on INET-Marketing, and some, such as visitor demographics, are still subjects of debate and controversy online today. However, INET-Marketing would prove to be short lived: not two years after its first message the list was dissolved. Yet its temporal lifespan belied its influence, and INET-Marketing proved to have an originating effect upon the field, paving the way for several important lists that would follow its lead. Glenn remembers what caused him to close down the list: “When I shut [INET-Marketing] down, it was partly out of frustration, as you can tell by reading the list. I had some ideas for further commercializing the list, and some prominent folks privately said that they didn't want their posts used in that fashion without compensation, and I was foolish enough in those days to not have had a non-exclusive policy in which posts became part of an archive that could be published. Ah, well. So it had stopped making real financial sense and was a big time sink to run. A few months after that I joined Amazon.com and sold my business, having a whirlwind six months in dotcom time before deciding that was not how I wanted to spend my life.” Discussion lists are by nature extremely time consuming enterprises, and busy lists can quickly contribute to large demands on the moderator. As Glenn wrote of the INET-Marketing's demise in early summer, 1996, "The list has been fascinating to run, but it's taken up a never-decreasing chunk of time in my life..." Among the last posts of its final day, Glenn’s remarks stood out: "The spark is gone for me, and it's hard for me to put anything less than 100% effort behind what I'm involved with. Since I've lost my interest in the list, and it's an idiosyncratic venture, it's time to shut 'er down. It involves from five to ten hours per week of my time, and, after nearly two years of this, I'd rather be biking, dining, working on other projects, or writing." As was noted, the closure of INET-Marketing would open the way for many would-be successors. Glenn's pioneering work demonstrated how much demand existed for moderated, professional forums, and INET-Marketing's end created a splintering effect. While its spiritual heir was intended to be Online Advertising (or Online Ads), a discussion list then moderated by Richard Hoy, many subscribers of INET-Marketing moved on to other lists. Notables included the Internet Marketing Roundtable (founded by Charles Sayers), the Web Digest for Marketers (Larry Chase's newsletter which is still published), and John Audette's legendary Internet-Sales List (also known as I-Sales). “The biggest lists I recall after my shut down were the ones that [John Audette] and Richard Hoy ran,” Glenn reflects. “There were a few other attempts, but none that stuck. I think there was a golden period during which a very small number of people were involved in the majority of the small-to-medium sized Internet marketing work that was going on. We had Jeff Bezos on the list and a host of entrepreneurs and journalists. By mid-1996, most of the most interesting veterans had left or stopped reading the list, and it was all newbie. If I'd been a real go-getter, I would have realized that setting up a set of resources for budding Internet marketers would have been a worthwhile business. But I was more interested in ecommerce than emarketing.” Next: The Next Wave of Ecommerce Discussion Lists
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