By Mark on Jan 28, 2008 in Database marketing, Featured, Process, Testing | 0 Comments
I've recently received several direct response efforts that are unfortunately poor examples of our science and craft. But they provide some important lessons that we should all take into account when preparing our next campaigns, whether they be acquisition, retention or winback efforts.
The two efforts I'm going to write about appear to suffer from at least one flaw that I try to address with clients and employees. I call it "fingertips."
By that, I mean that the nuts and bolts and detail of the marketing effort or analysis need to flow from the written page or the computer monitor through your eyes, be processed by your brain and then exit via your fingertips to the email, instant message, Excel spreadsheet, etc. It's not about forwarding the print production schedule you get from your printer or assigning the analysis of the media plan to your least-experienced employee because it's tedious. Having "fingertips" means you know the detail because you've not only seen it, but processed it and then had it exit via your keyboard.
I didn't see the "fingertips" of the marketing managers in these efforts. Al Pacino, in his famous rant at Kevin Spacey in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross would have put it more bluntly.
"Where did you learn your trade?"
By Mark on Jan 27, 2008 in Advertising, Direct Mail, Direct Marketing, Inserts, Marketing, Testing | 1 Comment
For the first time in a long time I took a few minutes to run through the Valpak co-op mailing I received last week.
After a few minutes of looking at the offers, I came up with a short list of things to consider if you're using Valpak (or other co-ops) as a marketing channel. The [...]
By Mark on Jan 16, 2008 in Email marketing, Marketing, Offer, Online, Strategy | 0 Comments
Every once in a while, I get a great email from one of the many companies I do business with online. Today's great email is from ProFlowers and contains both an outstanding offer and some great strategic thinking.
Unbeknownst to me, ProFlowers suffered from some serious downtime yesterday. And with it getting close to [...]
By Mark on Jan 15, 2008 in Database marketing, Featured, Strategy | 0 Comments
I've been working on a list analytics project recently and that's resulted in me thinking of, among other things, universes. I've started to think about model performance and how the changes to the economy might be impacting marketing results.
However, I wasn't tempted to write this post until two things happened yesterday. First, [...]
By Mark on Jan 6, 2008 in Analytics, Online, Optimization, Testing | 0 Comments
A client recently asked me "who can tell me if my website is working well for me?" My immediate response was "your customers and your browsers." This, of course, triggered a conversation of how it was possible to talk to tens of thousands of (usually) anonymous visitors, collect their insights and then translate that to [...]
By Mark on Jan 3, 2008 in Copy, Marketing, Products | 1 Comment
My first post of 2008 comes as the result of a fairly normal activity that many of us--if we listen to the financial gurus and our financial advisors--undertake every year. Namely, double-checking our financial records, investment portfolio allocations, life insurance and so forth.
During this year's analysis of my bank accounts, I found that a teaser [...]
