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4 Jan 2001, UK

Dear Dr E-commerce,

Do you know where one can buy lists of companies trading on the Internet?

Thank you.

Best regards,

Sonia

Dear Sonia:

This depends on what exactly you mean by "trading on the Internet" and what you want to do with the list of companies. In any event, the answer to your question is: yes.

First, we need to clarify what kind of companies you want. Do you want companies trading goods and services, in other words, B2B e-commerce companies? Or do you want companies trading stocks on-line? Or are you interested in another kind of trading?

Secondly, we need to know what you want to do with the list. If you want it for marketing purposes, such as to send promotional material (via the post), then you would do best to contact a direct marketing company that sells mailing lists. If you want to send promotional material via e-mail, you have to be very careful. Mass sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail is called "spam". Reputable businesses don't like to receive spam and they never send it. Since I know you come from a reputable business, I'm sure you wouldn't want to spam people. At best, it would tarnish your firm's reputation. At worst, people would complain to your ISP and you would find your web site and e-mail closed down (almost certainly your "terms of use" agreement with your ISP prevents spamming) as well. For more information about spam and why it is such a bad thing (I personally think it is the biggest threat to the Internet), take a look at the Coalition against unsolicited e-mail's web site at www.cauce.org.

That doesn't mean you cannot market via e-mail, it only means you should never send out mass unsolicited e-mail. If you personalise each e-mail to each recipient, and ensure they are really a potential client, then you can usually send commercial e-mail. In this case, you want to know a little about the company (see below), and prepare a short e-mail explaining what you offer, how it will help the prospective client and inviting the client to visit a web site or e-mail back for more information (whatever you do, don't send a massive attachment). I won't go into detail here. But if this is what you want to do, e-mail me again and I will elaborate.

If you want the list of companies for research purposes or to send targetted e-mail, then Yahoo (www.uk.yahoo.com in the UK), is a good place to start, click on the appropriate categories (starting with "Business & Economy" if you want global businesses, or with "Countries" if you want to focus on specific geographical areas). This way, you'll get lists of companies together with web sites that allow you to find out more about the companies.

Good luck,

Dr. Ecommerce