THUS FAR I HAVE focused on email’s value as an immensely efficient tool that companies can use to build an ongoing dialogue with their customers. While email is here to stay, the future of customer dialogue will rapidly expand far beyond anything we know today. Individualized communications delivered to customers via websites, instant messaging, and wireless devices are just the very beginning.

The Internet will be everywhere in the future. It will become a part of the very fabric of all communication and almost all devices, ranging from your car to your home, to your sprinkler system. Your cellular telephone will be connected to the network. (More on that shortly.) Some companies, such as Amazon.com, ...

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