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Marketers are learning how regular contacting affects the building and sustaining of customer Relationships. Technological innovations, new channels, and changing media environments facilitate this shift (Bhattacharya and Bolton 2000), and the ques tion of how firms should interact with their customers is gaining in importance, especially as firms consider the cost differences between traditional communications media, such as tele vision and sales forces, and electronic media, such as the Web and email (Reina rtz et al. 2005). The cost efficiency and interactivity of digital channels facilitate ongoing dialogue between th e enterprise and the customer (see e.g. Deighton and Barwise 2000; Peppers and Rogers 2004). Marketers can now be in touch with their customers on a more frequent basis and increase the level of personalization and interactivity with low or non-excessive cost. Our main claim is that being frequently in touch with customers should help achieve positive effects on customer loyalty.

The digital world has developed faster than the tools needed to measure it. This lag has made it difficult for marketers to fully exploit the Webs promise as the most targetable and measurable medium in the history of marketing. Hobbled by nascent technologies, inconsistent metrics, and a reliance on outdated media models, marketers are failing to tap the Webs full power. Unless this problem can be addressed, the inability to make accurate measurements of digital advertisings effectiveness across channels and consumer touch points will continue to promote the misallocation of media budgets and to impede the industrys growth. Some companies, though, are developing analytics that allow them to compare the effectiveness of their on- and offline efforts. Others are learning how online marketing messages convert shoppers into buyers, both online and in stores.