1. Who are you marketing to?
Someone who would open an email with "president of South Korea" for the subject line, that began ... "Dear Friend, My name is JANG DOO-HWAN, The brother of Mr. Chun DOO-HWAN, former President of South Korea who seized power..."

You recognize those emails from a mile away, but they wouldn't still be sending them if someone wasn't opening them and responding to them. What they're seeking is the tens of thousands of people who enter the Internet for the first time every day.

2. Whatever your market, it's far from saturated on the Internet.

In no other medium is there such movement. If you repeat a snail mailing within 6 months to the same addresses, what percenage of names do you think would be new? How many people tune in to "Law and Order" for the very first time each week?

3. It presents unique marketing challenges.

If you have a product or service that "hasn't taken off yet," you must figure out whether more time and the constant stream of new people would make a difference, or whether it's just terminally a bad idea.

4. This means you can repeat yourself, but this also means you must repeat yourself.

If a train left the station at ... Okay, say you have an eZine that's doubling every six months, and the average open-rate is 30 percent. If you get lazy and repeat the first issue at the end of the first year, how many of your subscribers could your predict would be seeing it for the first time?

5. Every day someone toddles onto your website who's never heard of PayPal ...

...who doesn’t know to scroll down, or how to reset the text size for their browser, who’s afraid to put their credit card on the Internet, and who wonders why that print is blue, i.e., it isn't just your site that's new, it's the Internet that's new to them.

6. We can count on the fact that every day there will be more non-US individuals surfing the web, and more individuals whose first language is not English.

Keep this in mind as you write copy, talk about holidays, and make references to statistics. We are used to saying “the divorce rate is 50%.” We mean “in the US,” and it’s generally understood to mean “in the US,” but those days are disappearing fast.

7. It's multicultural and global.

Start checking on how US-centric you are, i.e.,
Thanksgiving Day is October 13th ... in Canada.
Labor Day is May 1 ... in Mexico.
New Year's Day is lunar, late-January to mid-February ... in China.


And for those people of those cultures who reside in the US and other countries.

8. While we're hunkering down for winter in the US, it's spring in New Zealand, and each has a very different energy.

That teleclass you schedule at 8 pm CST, US, won't be attended by a lot of folks in the UK because it’s the middle of the night over there.

9. Remember co-evolution. Don't be alarmed at the changes.

Yes, the spam got out of hand, and yes, "they" came up with spam filters, and yes "they" found a way around them, and yes "they" called it something else and came up with something different. Staying ahead of the pack has always been necessary to stay competitive. Same game, different playground.

10. So, whether you’re anticipating Thanksgiving Day or Eid al Fitr this month (November), or both, qué le vaya bien.

About the Author
Susan Dunn, San Antonio, TX, USA
sdunn@susandunn.cc
http://www.susandunn.cc
Susan Dunn, MA, Psychology, Emotional Intelligence Coach, http://www.susandunn.cc . Coaching, Internet courses and ebooks around emotional intelligence for career, relationships, transitions, resilience, personal and professional development. Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for free ezine.