Targeted marketing to boost e-commerce
Paris, 19 November 1998 – The World Chambers Network broke new ground today by introducing e-Club, an interactive online marketing service that helps provide chamber members with global e-commerce opportunities that always reach their target.
The service enables its members to e-mail a business opportunity automatically to potential customers anywhere in the world who have already said they want to know about it – and to nobody else. Subscribers also can verify with whom they are dealing.
The e-Club’s approach to e-commerce ensures that buyers or sellers of goods and services focus precisely where potential business exists in the vastness of cyberspace. Business-to-business transactions are the fastest growing commercial sector on the Internet.
E-club is a special feature of the World Chambers Network, an Internet service built on the world chambers of commerce movement. WCN already offers an extensive business opportunities database, the Global Business eXchange, the Internet’s most complete registry of chambers of commerce, and a trade resources library.
The consortium running WCN consists of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Trade Information Network of the UN/G77 Conference of Chambers of Commerce, the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the International Business Network for World Commerce and Indusry Ltd. (IBNET). The e-Club application and Web site was created and will be supported by IBM Global Services.
Details of any product or service sought or put on the market by an e-Club member are instantaneously e-mailed to other members with matching needs. Members can be buyers and sellers at the same time. For instance, a company that manufactures radios can actively offer them to prospective buyers while also receiving offers from components manufacturers.
Prospective purchasers of goods or of legal, accounting or other professional services, or investors seeking to buy a business or enter a partnership can make the necessary contacts simply. They need only to enter an e-Club buying advertisement and it is automatically routed to all interested suppliers of the desired product, service or opportunity who are in a position to respond immediately.
"E-club provides what advertisers have dreamed for years – the ability to shut out the people who are not interested in their message and concentrate on those who are," said Myrna Z. Weiss, Chief Executive Officer of IBNET, WCN’s Managing Partner.
"With E-club, the recipient of the business opportunity has the ability to respond to the advertisement with one click of a button, all for about US$1 .00 a day. And the recipient can view the company profile before responding. It is interactive rather than the traditional passive advertising," Ms Weiss added.
A further advantage is that advertiser and buyer are both assured that they are dealing with legitimate businesses since chambers of commerce have validated all the membership applications. Confidentiality is also protected. Each new member receives a unique electronic certificate that allows advertisements and company profiles to be encrypted as they are sent out. The certificate automatically identifies the user to the WCN.
Maria Livanos Cattaui, Secretary General of ICC – the world’s leading business organization and a founding member of the WCN consortium – said: "The Internet is the great leveler. By joining e-Club, any company, whatever its size and financial resources. can start to find and evaluate business partners on a global basis.
"ICC is backing the project because an increasingly important part of our job is to help companies to use the Internet to expand their business," Mrs Cattaui said.
"IBM is excited to be hosting and supporting this new online service and believes it will provide a unique value to chamber members around the world," said Neil Isford, Vice President, e-business services, IBM Global Services. "Only IBM provides the breadth of hardware, software and services to enable the global deployment of an application like e-Club."