Respect (and Sell To) Your Elders

* seniors control 77 percent of all personal assets in the U.S. and half of all discretionary spending ($750 billion);

* they own 40 million credit cards;

* they buy 48 percent of all the luxury cars sold in the U.S.; and

* they spend $610 billion on health care.

So why is less than 10 percent of general advertising targeted at them? The short answer is marketers are unsure how to target this powerful group. In his recent whitepaper, Capturing the Exploding Senior Market: 23 Rules for Targeting Seniors, Richard Tooker, vice president/solutions architect for KnowledgeBase Marketing, a provider of database marketing solutions, provides tips on how to tap into this burgeoning market. Here are some of his more noteworthy techniques: