The Direct Marketing Association agreed Monday to take over the Association for Interactive Media, creating the biggest trade association of offline and online direct marketers.
"This acquisition is a sign of the times, a snapshot of what's going on in the business world today," said DMA's president, Robert Wientzen. "Many mainstream, stable, and traditional businesses are merging with younger, entrepreneurial startups on the verge of success. Each side needs the other to move e-commerce into a successful future."
The DMA's 4,000 members send millions of pieces of marketing material to potential customers through the postal service. Some of its members are beginning to venture on the Web. The AIM represents the Internet marketing industry.
Antispam activists -- people who are trying to reduce unsolicited commercial email, or spam -- are watching warily. The savvy of traditional direct marketers applied to the Internet has the potential of being a blessing -- or a curse.
The DMA says it members can target their marketing more efficiently, reducing annoying messages to people who aren't interested. On the other hand, direct marketing would proliferate on the Web.
"The only way you can really hit a specific person on the Net with some message is to email it to them," said Steven Sobol, a founder of the Forum for Responsible and Ethical Email. "Otherwise there's no way to get it to them [directly] -- so I'm sure that's is what they'll be concentrating on."
If that's the case, he warns that new online marketers could become as reviled as current spammers if they begin collecting people's email addresses off of Web pages and online discussion groups.
To prevent these marketers from targeting unwilling email recipients, there is an effort already underway to clear promotional mailing lists of unwilling addressees. Though antispammers are skeptical, the database administrators say they think they can introduce more responsible email marketing to the Net.
But marketers will have to earn skeptics trust first, which is easier said than done.
"There's a question about whether we can trust an organization whose first priority is to make sure its members have as many avenues for direct marketing as possible," Sobol said.
Sobol worries that even if "legitimate" marketers move onto the Net in a responsible manner, their presence won't do anything to alter a Net already overburdened with fly-by-night marketers who abuse email with spam. "People who don't follow the rules aren't going to start following the rules just because the DMA says to."
Members of the DMA, established in 1917, include IBM, Dell, LL Bean, J Crew, AT&T, Time, and Microsoft. AIM has almost 250 members using the Net for business purposes, including MindSpring, Yoyodyne, Hotmail, Bloomberg, Citicorp, and MTV Interactive.
The 5-year-old AIM, headquartered in Washington, will operate as a subsidiary of the DMA.
