According to an article in Internet Marketing Report (5/25/07), 52% of U.S. adults never read a blog, and 16% don’t even know what a blog is.

The article concludes that investing a lot of your marketing budget in blogging “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Do you agree with that conclusion? Disagree? Why?

BB, an old ad agency veteran whom I always liked and respected, resurfaced in my life via e-mail … but not in a pleasant way.

He starts off nicely enough, asking if I remember him and giving me a nice compliment about my being a smart guy.

But then, he says: “But I get annoyed at the get-rich-quick schemes you lend your name to on the Internet” — referring to my endorsement of Matt Feury’s upcoming seminar on e-mail copywriting.

“It is really beyond the pale. There most be a more appropriate way to earn a commission. Jeez…”

Here’s just a partial list of my problems with BB’e e-mail:

First, Matt Feury is the real deal. The guy spends 15 minutes typing out a personal e-mail, broadcasts it to his list with a mouse click, and makes about $10,000 a day.

He is not a “hustle.” He knows how to make money online, and more important, can teach us how to do so.

Second, BB’s e-mail implies that all Internet marketing is sleazy.

Hey, BB, you were a Madison Avenue ad guy. Who are you to talk about sleazy?

Third, BB also implies that I am a low-life by selling information online.

Is there something inherently wrong or low-class about marketing information online?

Tell that to the New York Times … the Wall Street Journal … Harvard Business School Publishing … Better Homes & Gardens … and thousands of other publishers, small and large, who make great profits selling useful content their buyers love online!

What perhaps is more of a hustle, BB, is trying to convince sucker clients that pouring millions into big print and TV ad campaigns, that can’t be measured and win awards for creativity but not sales, is a smart way to invest one’s money.

You’ve been doing that for years — after all, you’re a smart guy too.

Right, old friend?

But I’m really not angry at BB. Just his ignorance and misconceptions, which so many people share.

If I saw him again, the first beer would be on me — with a warm handshake and a smile….

A couple of months ago, I joined the opt-in e-list of a semi-obscure entertainer whose CDs I enjoy.

By mid-afternoon of that day, I had received three e-mail marketing messages from him.

When a fourth arrived around 5pm, I hollered “enough!” — and unsubscribed from his list.

That got me thinking about the question: how much e-mail is too much?

Say you subscribe to a company’s monthly e-newsletter.

In addition to that monthly e-letter, will you tolerate additional e-mail messages from them?

If so, how many?

One a week … one a day … somewhere in between?

How much e-mail is too much?

In the 1960s, Mad Magazine spokesperson Alfred E. Neumann made famous the saying: “What, me worry?”

In the 21st century, one of the things e-marketers worry about is e-mail deliverability.

Some e-mail marketers devote large amounts of time, attention, and money to making sure there e-mail marketing messages are not blocked by spam filters and other mechanisms interfering with deliverability.

Their reasoning is that if an e-mail isn’t delivered, it doesn’t get opened, read, or responded to.

But some of the e-mails they product are so sterile … and look so odd (e.g., “f-r-e-e instead of “free”) … they have (to me) little impact.

On the other hand, some e-mail marketers just write the strongest copy possible — as if they are saying “spam filters be damned!”

Which school are you in?

Do you worry about spam filters and content filters when composing e-mail marketing messages?

Or do you ignore all the “rules” of e-mail deliverability and still get great click through rates and sales?

Is HTML e-mail on its way out?

Michael Della Penna, chief marketing officer of Epsilon Interactive, seems to think we may be headed that way.

In an interview with Direct magazine (10/15/06, p. 9), Penna said that retailers who still use all-HTML e-mail are in for a “horrendous” online holiday shopping season.

He cites a study by his firm showing that for 65% of Internet users, images are suppressed in the e-mail they receive, and so they can’t see the graphics.

As a marketer, what works best for you — text or HTML e-mails?

As a consumer, which would you rather receive … and why?

JF seems to think so.

He was one of the people on my list who received my e-mail with the subject line: “Do you know these response-boosting secrets?”

The e-mail linked to a page where I was selling an audio learning program titled “Ultimate Direct Response Secrets.”

“When I was starting out, you were one of the people I admired and touted as a great source of information on marketing,” complained JF. “Recently, you’ve become a tireless shill for products purporting to show how to make money on the Internet.”

JF says that in my e-mail, you “offer to reveal the answers … and then direct me to a Web site that offers no answers other than to shill for yet another of your products that will contain the answers.”

He then asks: “What happened to giving some stuff away for free?”

JF is of the school that says all information on the Internet should be free.

He also seems to think that selling information products online is inherently sleazy.

What do YOU think? Am I a scum-bucket like JF says? Or is it perfectly OK for me to e-mail people on my opt-in lists notifying them of my new information products?

P.S. Had JF Googled “Bob Bly,” he would have come to my main Web site with about 50 free articles on all aspects of marketing. He also gets my monthly e-newsletter packed with marketing tips, for which he pays nothing.

So far, it seems not.

Mark Host, a recent Fordham University graduate, launched www.nycxmas.com to sell Christmas trees online with $20,000 of his own savings and a $10,000 loan from his dad.

To date, he has sold only five trees.

But as an article about Mark in the 12/1/05 issue of the Daily News notes, most people don?t buy their tree until mid-December.

So it?s too early to say whether the business will work.

Now, many of the readers of this blog are Internet marketers, so let me ask you guys:

What advice do you have for Mark to make his Internet-based Xmas tree business a smash success?

And what can he do with the site to make money on the off season ? which for Xmas trees is every month of the year except December?

?SEO (Search Engine Optmization) copywriting? requires that the copywriter concern himself with strategic placement of key words within his Web copy to optimize search engine rankings of the pages he writes.

The problem is that to create really powerful copy, you have to have a single core audience in mind ? and concentrate all your effort on writing to that one audience.

When I write copy, that audience is the prospect ? the potential buyer of the product I am selling.

But with SEO copywriting, you are pandering to another ?audience? ? the search engines ? and not the reader.

And by creating copy that?s optimal for attracting search engines, you are, to some degree, weakening that copy?s power to sell ? diluting its strength ? because you are worrying about two audiences: the reader and the search engines ? instead of focusing every word on the customer.

And that?s not how to write copy that sells.

I think the best approach is:

1. Write the strongest selling copy you can aimed at the human reader ? and forget the search engines.

2. Once that copy is finished, go back and check to make sure key words are appropriately placed, but?.

3. Never change a word of strong selling copy if that change will make it even one iota weaker ? even if SEO best practices would endorse that change.

In other words, write for the customer ? and not SEO.

My small poll of top copywriters ? writers with a proven track record of writing winners ? agree.

?I?d rather invest my time and energy in [writing] interesting, informative, and fact-filled copy,? says Gary Bencivenga.

Parris Lampropoulos doesn?t even think about search engines when writing copy:

?When I?m writing the copy, I?m working at one task and one task only: to get whoever is reading it to place the order.?

To which I add: Right on!

Of course, I?m sure you have your own opinion on SEO and copywriting. So: what say you?