Direct Marketing Association

The competition is on. In this economy, marketers are scrambling to find the most cost-effective methods for capturing, communicating and engaging customers and prospects. But they're forgetting that the channel chosen is only part of the equation. Marketers must create unforgettable brand experiences, no matter the channel of communication, to be effective or even survive in our ever-evolving world.

By and large, attendees at industry conferences throughout at least the first half of this year had something of a bewildered look. Kind of a “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” sort of thing going on. Then again, so too did just about anyone in this country amid the brutal recession. But perhaps the Fall NEMOA Conference, held last week at the gaudy Foxwoods Casino complex in Mashantucket, Conn., showed signs of a new, more encouraged, more aggressive attitude among attendees and speakers.

The two-year-old American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) trudges along like a little engine that could. But can it? Despite its newness and relatively tiny membership, this organization has delivered an effective wake-up call to both the USPS and the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) on the plight of catalog mailers, helping foster the recent postal “summer sale.”

The two-year-old American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) trudges along like a little engine that could. But can it? Despite its newness and relatively tiny membership, this organization has delivered an effective wake-up call to both the USPS and the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) on the plight of catalog mailers, helping foster the recent postal “summer sale.”

Multichannel marketers have an ideal way to boost sales, but not all of them use it. The method: sending emails to announce the arrival of a catalog. In a famous case study a few years ago, gifts and gadgets marketer Miles Kimball performed the optimal test.

Want to see your average order values, conversion rates and lifetime values go up? Bring a call center into the mix. Think about it this way: If your Web site converts 4 percent of visitors, even the worst of call centers will convert at least 10 percent of callers. That’s a 2.5:1 ratio, on the low end.

A group of the nation's largest media and marketing trade associations today released self-regulatory principles to protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media that will require advertisers and Web sites to clearly inform consumers about data collection practices and enable them to exercise control over that information.

This week, let's look at the many ways you can lose prospects who visit your Web site without even knowing who they are. This phantom demand can be captured and added to your contact strategy, and these leads can be nurtured until they're ready to buy. To capture them and begin a sales dialogue, however, you must get them to identify themselves, right?  

Last week, I gave a presentation to the Florida Direct Marketing Association titled “50 Tips to Drive ROI in the Second Half of 2009.” I’m going to share those tips with you over the course of the next few weeks.

It seems that a lot of you are pretty shy. Over on my personal blog, I’ve been getting a lot of comments to my last article on the evolution of our industry. There's been some back and forth about going green and its impact on direct mail — the typical “direct mail kills the environment” issue.