Once upon a time, in time before the Internet, the bulk of one's business came from word-of-mouth referrals. Now, to maintain visibility, one must use multiple marketing strategies. The combination of the Internet and email has provided a powerful, low-cost method to reach large numbers of people. However, sending unsolicited emails generates unwanted irritation.

Gallatin Technologies, Inc. (at http://www.gallatin.com), in developing kNEWS, a permission-based email subscription application, has taken a large step in solving the problem for companies that use Lotus Notes. Although there appear to be some definition inconsistencies and some design flaws in the application, the four kNEWS databases, working together, enable companies to keep in touch with their customers by sending newsletters and then monitoring and analyzing the results of their marketing endeavors.

How Does kNEWS Work?
kNEWS consists of four collaborative databases:

• kNEWS Subscription, a repository for subscriber names either deposited from a Web registration form or imported into the database;

• kNEWS Publication, a database with publication style documents, articles, and newsletters;

• kNEWS Reporting, a database containing statistical reports;

• kNEWS Logging, which keeps track of ongoing activity in the other databases.

Going from start to finish, eight steps are needed to accomplish the goal of having customers receive the appropriate newsletter: define the campaign; create groups and publication categories; register subscribers; specify parameters for the publication style; write the articles; create the newsletter; mail the publication to the subscribers, and analyze the statistics.

Defining a campaign
First, a campaign is defined. This is done in kNEWS Reporting. According to Gallatin Technologies, campaigns are a collection of statistics about subscribers and publications and can be related to both groups and publications. A campaign is assigned either an active or inactive status. Only one campaign can be active at a time. To me, campaigns are marketing strategies, and it's not clear how they're used in this application. I hope that in a future release this ambiguity is clarified.