As the economy shows signs of shifting in a more positive direction, many companies are revisiting direct marketing programs that were profitable years ago but were cut during the height of the recession to reduce marketing budgets. Contrary to the boom years, most marketers are cost-conscious these days when setting up programs. We are willing to try new things or revisit the old, but not in the same way as in the past.

As marketing practitioners, our fresh focus on marketing operations, procurement, and the marketing supply chain has made us better business people and, I contend, more successful marketers from an ROI perspective.

Print Automation is Less Sexy Than Email Automation, But Far Richer in Opportunity for Cost Reduction

Print automation is a fairly new term in the industry and a clear success story for early adopters.  Some would label print automation simply as traditional print and direct mail, but with cost-saving enhancements related to how print can be procured and deployed.  Marketing automation, a much more widely used and accepted term, is related, but most often focuses only on email automation and never sees the full deployment and integration of print into the marketing automation mix.  Although this article focuses solely on educating business leaders on print automation, full marketing automation that incorporates all channels is the ultimate aspiration.