The Direct Marketing Association released their annual Response Rate Trend Report this week, including some interesting findings about direct mail, email, paid search ads, Internet display ads, and telemarketing: “Response rates for Direct Mail have held steady over the past four years. Letter-sized envelopes, for instance, had a response rate this year of 3.42 percentfor a house list and...
Catalog Marketing Delivered On-Demand: An Interview with Jason Kort
An effective catalog has been proven to increase sales, both online and offline, by countless sources. Throw in variable data, variable imagery, on-demand printing and image generation, and an easy ordering interface, and you have a sales and marketing dream come true. Jason Kort, Director of Marketing for Redemption Plus I recently had the chance...
What Jelly Teaches About User Adoption of Marketing Asset Management
Years ago, Columbia professor, Sheena Ivengar ran an interesting consumer test. She set up a “free samples” table in a super market and proceeded to test the difference between sampling six jellies Vs. sampling 24 jellies. The net result: when six jellies were presented, 40% of the shoppers stopped to sample, and 30% bought jelly. ...
Marketing Asset Management: How to Get Best in Class Performance
So if you could improve your ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) by 32%, would you do it? The Aberdeen Group has recently published a research study Marketing Asset Management: Managing Brand Compliance in Distributed Marketing Environmentsthat highlights this significant increase in ROMI by Best in Class Companies using Marketing Asset Management. The key summary points from the...
B2B Lead Generation: Six “Ah-Ha’s” to Get to the Most “Cha Ching”
Off. On. Off. On. If only lead generation were a faucet under my control. I am certainly seeing more need in our business and in our clients’ businesses for more leads, but only at specific times. Like most Business-to-Business (B2B) marketers today, my budget is still tight, but loosening up a bit, and I am...
Video: Multi-Channel Marketing Automation
Staying in contact with your prospects and customers is key for building and maintaining revenue. However, it can also be an ongoing challenge and resource-draw for your sales and marketing teams. Check out the video below to learn how businesses are using NextPage’s (formerly Mail Print) multi-channel marketing automation system to transform their lead nurturing and customer retention...
Using Marketing Automation without Compromising Your Data Warehouse
There is no doubt that an enterprise data warehouse has helped countless organizations consolidate their information into one central database allowing for better analysis and use of the data. This has certainly been the case for improving targeting and segmenting of direct marketing efforts. It has also been a boon to being able to use...
A Ginormous Pitfall in Database and Direct Marketing Planning
In the past two weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down with a couple of fellow direct marketers. One is a prospective client, considering the use of variable data printing for the first time. The other is a long-time friend who needs help getting a better ROI on his direct mail and email campaigns. Both have worked in online,...
Email: Direct Mail’s New BFF
Email is, by far, the best thing to ever hit direct marketing. One of the newest ways we are helping our clients manage their direct communications is by helping them develop automated systems to use direct mail strategically in conjunction with email campaigns. Let me share some of the innovative ways our clients are approaching the mail/email equation:...
Is Your Direct Marketing Positively Impacting Your Customer Life Cycle?
PART ONE: Defining Your Customer Life Cycle Academically speaking, the customer life cycle begins with a prospect: an interested party who may potentially need your product or service. Adept companies qualify their prospects to pinpoint their sales efforts on leads that are ready to buy, while using automated marketing tactics such as email campaigns and direct mail programs...