TargitMail.com, Portsmouth, NH, and Juno Online Services, New York, recently announced a partnership that would make the e-mail marketer the exclusive reseller of e-mail advertising inventory on Juno's basic Internet access service.
As part of the one-year agreement, Juno will allow TargitMail to distribute a controlled number of e-mail ads to the Internet service provider's 3.7 million active subscribers. In return, Juno said it expects to generate millions of dollars in advertising sales revenue over the next year.
“E-mail marketing is an increasingly attractive option for advertisers,” said Leelila Strogov, Juno's senior vice president for business development. “We're excited about working with [TargitMail], both because of the revenue opportunity and because of their ability to provide our subscribers with information about products and services targeted to their interests.”
John Malm, TargitMail's executive vice president of global advertising sales, said his firm was attracted to Juno because of the size of its user base and the depth to which the ISP had profiled those customers. Whereas many of its larger e-mail marketer rivals collect e-mail names individually — as each user signs up to a Web site — TargitMail concentrates instead on building its lists in large chunks, such as the nearly 4 million-name Juno score.
Prior to the Juno alliance, TargitMail announced relationships with a variety of partners, including database marketer infoUSA, online sweepstakes firm ePrize, online media firm OneMediaPlace and e-mail outsourcer Commtouch.
Additionally, Malm said it does not have to “re-profile the users,” because, in some cases, the Juno profiles run deeper than TargitMail's own profiles. Juno is not, however, providing the e-marketer with personally identifiable information about its subscribers.
The deal is by no means a license for TargitMail to blitz Juno subscribers with unlimited or unwanted e-mails. Juno will determine how frequently it will permit TargitMail to hit its users, and users are free to opt out of any mailings. The ISP is also free to prohibit any e-mail ads from its network if it deems that they conflict with existing Juno partnerships, according to Malm.
It took Juno and TargitMail about eight months of conversations and negotiations to work out the details of this partnership, Malm said. In October, about a month after getting the systems and infrastructure aligned, TargitMail started delivering e-mail ads to Juno users.
Juno is the country's third largest ISP, trailing only America Online and EarthLink. In addition to its 3.7 million active users, Juno counts another 9 million registered subscriber accounts.
TargitMail, through a series of partnerships, manages a database of 12 million e-mail addresses and profiles. Marketers can compile a personalized list through the database's search engine technology, called eTom, by keying in words describing a campaign's desired demographic audience.
