Admit it, entrepreneurs: Consumers may vilify those marketing calls that always seem to come at dinnertime, but you'd carpet-bomb the market yourself if it weren't so expensive and complicated, wouldn't you? Well, let your inner mass-marketer go wild. A three-month-old Web-based service called MessageBlaster makes it possible for even a solo entrepreneur to blitz as many as 2,000 people at a time with an automated message -- by phone call, E-mail, page, or fax -- from a PC.

MessageBlaster isn't the only way a small business can tap mass-marketing technology. Alternatives can be costly, though. You can install automated-dialing software -- like the programs big companies use -- on a PC and hire someone to call prospects. Or you can contract with a phone company or call center. For that, you'll likely spend several thousand dollars just to set up a campaign. Plus there are monthly fees and minimums on the number of calls.

MessageBlaster's appeal is that it requires no investment, salary, or monthly fee. Charges are per call, and an entrepreneur can launch a mini-marketing blitz to a thousand people for as little as $150 in the time it takes to enter the customer names. The service works best for lists of 2,000 names or less.

Alain Daste, chief executive and founder of the Billerica (Mass.) company, shrugs off criticism that MessageBlaster is a consumer annoyance. Daste says he's looking out for the entrepreneur competing against the marketing juggernauts of big companies: Small businesses "need to close business faster," he says. "They need to have a way to communicate with their clients or with a prospect quickly and efficiently."

Marketing pros believe that MessageBlaster has few direct competitors, for now. Technologically, it fits into the universe of unified messaging services such as JFax.com, Ipost.net, and Efax.com. Unlike them, MessageBlaster sends out messages. The other services gather incoming messages in various media (say, phone mail, E-mail, and fax) and convert them so the recipient can retrieve them in one place.

Here's how MessageBlaster works. First you compile the phone or fax numbers or E-mail addresses of the people you want to reach. Go to www.messageblaster.com and enter them at the site. Click "send new message," and type in the text. E-mail and fax messages can be any length, but MessageBlaster recommends you keep phone calls under one minute. Then, select names from your address book and indicate how you'd like to reach them (phone, fax, etc.). MessageBlaster blasts off the message.

It's certainly fast. When we tested MessageBlaster in the office, the phone rang within seconds. A chirpy electronic voice stated our message, but you can record a message in your own voice. (We found MessageBlaster's own marketing pitch at the beginning and end of the message a bit much.) E-mails and faxes arrived speedily and in good order. The service also lets you pose a "yes/no" question and tallies the responses. A summary page tells you if your message went through and whether an answering machine or a person got it. Each phone call within the U.S. and Canada costs 15 cents per minute. (They're free for up to three people.) Faxes cost 10 cents a page and pager messages 15 cents per minute. International calls will be available at the end of the month. E-mail will remain free. In October, MessageBlaster will let you mail postcards, too. The company will transmit your text message to a print shop that stamps it on up to 1,000 cards (more by special arrangement) and ships them off. So far, MessageBlaster has about 2,000 registered customers. Daste expects 100,000 regular users by the end of 2000.

Entrepreneurs may be tempted to go hog wild with this new toy. One marketing guru says that could backfire. Seth Godin, vice-president for permission marketing at Yahoo!, calls the entire approach a turnoff to consumers, who increasingly resent such interruptions. Godin says businesses first need to ask their contacts if they mind being reached this way. "If you do this without permission, if you just harvest addresses, it will put you out of business because it is going to alienate the people you want to market to," he asserts.

Another consideration: Unsolicited mass marketing may not be very effective for small businesses. Data gathered by one major Net portal shows that, typically, less than 1% of those contacted even respond to a direct pitch via phone or mail, and fewer still buy something. That's why such campaigns tend to be the province of large companies with immense lists.

Some early MessageBlaster users say they're all for it, though. Graham Rowe, president of Concord Travel in Concord, Mass., says it's difficult to tell clients about discounted last-minute seats on a timely basis via direct mail, and the response rate is 3% at best. He recently tested MessageBlaster to contact 25 people for one such offer and heard from 30% of them. "This is far more user-friendly than the alternatives. It's easy for an individual to go onto the Web site and convey the customer list and have done with it in a very short space of time," he says.

MessageBlaster can also be used for contacting people en masse for other purposes than selling. Andrew D. Clapp is managing director of the eight-person Gateway Financial Group Inc. in Boston and runs the $20 million Brook Venture Fund. He has used the service for routine communications with his approximately 600 investors, such as leaving phone reminders to confirm receipt of documents. In the past, the task took a staffer several days.

Now Clapp plans to use MessageBlaster to make sales pitches to clients who have given their O.K., he says. For once, the dinner interruption will be for something they actually want to hear about.

By Jeremy Quittner in New York
jeremy_quittner@businessweek.com

To: ADVERTISING AND MARKETING