Thanks to the say-anything-to-sell-anything sales tactics used to hawk permission e-mail marketing opportunities over the past few years, many advertisers in the business-to-business (B2B) sector have unwittingly embraced a faulty syllogism that often results in unsuccessful campaigns.

This flawed logic works as follows:

1. E-mail marketing is related to traditional direct marketing.

2. A traditional direct marketing campaign often consists of just one mailing.

3. Therefore, you can likewise limit an e-mail marketing campaign to just one mailing.

One could construct a similar syllogism to prove that all Internet stocks will rise, but that doesn't make it true.

In the traditional direct marketing world, advertisers often limit a campaign to one mailing because of cost considerations (creative, printing, postage, etc.), and, more importantly, because they can tell a complete story in one mailing.

For example, a mailing might consist of a letter from the CEO, a collection of favorable testimonials and press clippings, a feature comparison chart, an order form, and whatever else the marketing professional thinks might help close a sale. Recipients can read all of this material or only some of it, and they can read it out of order in a non-linear fashion.