By Allan Maurer

DURHAM, NC – Teens may be texting, and social networking is all the rage, but e-mail is still the most used professional marketing tool. So says Ryan Allis, CEO and cofounder of icontact, the e-mail marketing firm. “People realize sending e-mail to your customers is still the best and cheapest way to grow sales,”says Allis.

Allis notes however, that the new generation has grown up with high-speed Internet access, and is changing the way we communicate socially professionally and personally.

Allis is one of more than 75 top Internet executives, entrepreneurs, and social networking experts participating in TechJournal South’s second annual Internet Summit at the Raleigh Convention Center Nov. 4-5 (see www.InternetSummit to register or for more information).

Allis says that while iContact has offered Web 2.0 features such as blogging, its customers primarily want its email marketing services. Especially in the down economy of the last year, companies have realized that sending emails to their customers is the cheapest way to grow sales.

“Retention marketing has a higher rate of return on your investment than new customer acquisition,” he says.

“It’s a lot less expensive to generate additional dollars in revenue by emailing people you already have a relationship with than by buying new leads or advertising.”

Allis notes that while the microblogging site Twitter is interesting, it carries a good deal of spam. “It’s most functionally useful when people are in a place such as a conference, but beyond that, I wonder what the eventual long term use will be. I don’t know if it’s going to become something permanent in the Internet culture like email.”

Other new technologies have profoundly affected the technology sector, especially the entrepreneurial startup space, he says.

“Cloud computing and software as a service have dramatically impacted the way we use applications over the Web.” They allow companies to use advanced technologies without paying huge upfront implementation fees, which make them “Very beneficial to lowering the barriers of entry for entrepreneurs into markets.

“The cost of computing power and bandwidth have gone down in recent years and more powerful and robust applications are available, many running through a browser now. That has changed the way businesses are run.”

But none of that has stopped people from using email, he adds.

The way people communicate is primarily a factor of their stage of life and what they’re using applications to do, he says.

“Regardless of whether you’re 21 and in your first job or 50, you’re not using Facebook or Twitter to communicate inside a business,” Allis notes. “In terms of getting real work done and not socializing, you don’t use Facebook. And Twitter is a very limited way to communicate.”

Texting, popular among teens and adults, may become less popular as everyone adopts smartphones such as Blackberry’s and iPhones, he suggests. “As smartphones become ubitquitious, everyone has email in their pocket and email is a more advanced way to communicate.”

Allis says he sees the huge increase in the number of people who will have email addresses they use on their smartphones spurring continued rapid growth at iContact, which now employs 176 people. The company sent 500 million emails last month alone on behalf of its customers.

Allis is also a pioneering “social entrepreneur,” who chairs Nourish International, a nonprofit company based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that teaches entrepreneurship to college students and has a presence on 29 college campuses. Net profits from ventures it starts contribute funds to social entrepreneurs in the developing world, he says.

He also runs the nonprofit Humanity Campaign, which contributes to other nonprofits domestically and internationally that work to reduce world hunger.

Allis has written about social engineering for TechJournal South. See, “Can a for profit entrepreneur be a social entrepreneur?” (http://techjournalsouth.com/news/article.html?item_id=8075).

“I feel the Internet is making a profound change in the way people of my generation communicate and collaborate,” says Allis.

“That is creating an opportunity for us to shape our world in ways in which there can be equality for everyone, in which we see everyone as human beings, not as members of a particular nation state. I think that will eventually lead to better understanding among different cultures and a better world.”

Join hundreds of Marketing Professionals and Internet Execs at Atlanta’s premier Digital event – Digital Summit 2012
www.digitalsummit.com

Related Stories:

• Email marketing still only used by a minority of small businesses
• Email marketing company sees multi-channel future
• Email marketing firm iContact offers free edition
• iContact connects with $5M debt financing
• iContact connects with $40M funding for email marketing

© 2009, TechJournal. All rights reserved.