Hear that rustling sound? It’s the sound of money being shifted from traditional media into digital.
That’s hardly news by itself, but a survey by Alterian shows that it is taking place on several continents, and in large amounts.
Of 1068 respondents in America, Europe and Asia/Pacific, 40% are shifting over a fifth of their budget dollars to digital media, and 21% more than a third. Read the rest of this entry »
How’s this for a miscalculation? Per Annum, a small firm specializing in corporate gifts, eliminated its annual direct mailing last year, and suffered a 25% drop in orders.
“We realized we had made a huge mistake,” Alicia Settle, president of the New York firm, told the Wall Street Journal. The firm has since restored its hand-signed letters program, and is pleased with the results.
That change of heart was one of several uncovered by the Journal in an article titled, “Firms Hold Fast to Snail Mail Marketing.” As the headline implies, the Journal found that “some entrepreneurs who were quick to write off direct mail as too pricey or passé are finding it’s not so easy to dismiss.”
Another was Peter Taffae, founder of ExecutivePerils, a wholesale insurance broker. Customers missed the firm’s colorful postcards based on satirical movie themes—and they let Taffae know it. He, too, has returned to the mails. Read the rest of this entry »
A B2B marketer asks: How do you prevent factory mail rooms from blocking your mail?
Good question. It still happens despite the decline in paper mail volume. We consulted our mystery guru, and he offered this suggestion: Make sure you have titles on your direct mail list.
“Corporations may have anywhere from 30 to 100 or more separate and distinct departments, each one with a head bearing a title,” he noted. Read the rest of this entry »
Email remains the most productive channel when it comes to ROI, according to new DMA statistics.
In 2009, email returned a “whopping $43.62 for every dollar spent on it,” according to a synopsis of the DMA report by ace reporter Ken Magill.
That’s a slight dip from $44.93 in 2008. But it still beats out other media. According to Magill (and the DMA), here’s how some other channels stacked up: Read the rest of this entry »
Watch it, TopCat. This is dangerous. A member of one of our LinkedIn groups is wondering about the role of gender in business selling.
“Do you prefer buying from a female or male salesperson (when buying B2B professional services face-to-face)?” he asks. Read the rest of this entry »
Maybe it doesn’t qualify as a boom. But a new report shows that many direct marketing companies are hiring again.
Of the 544 firms polled this month by Bernhart Associates Executive Search, 46% plan to add staff in the first quarter. That percentage was 30% in Q4 of 2009.
In addition, only 7% are planning layoffs, and 26% are maintaining hiring freezes (down from 45%). Read the rest of this entry »
Notice to companies getting started in social media: You’re not an early adopter.
The most advanced firms are among Inc. magazine’s 500 fastest-growing companies, according to a survey by the Center of Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
They’re ahead of the Fortune 500, which presumably means that they’re ahead of everyone.
Of those surveyed, 80% use social media. That’s up from 49% in 2008. And 14% are planning to use it. Read the rest of this entry »
It was, to paraphrase Queen Elizabeth, an “annus horibilus.”
If you thought things were bad in the fall of 2008, they got even worse during the early months of 2009. There were layoffs, budget cuts and a pervading sense of gloom.
Here are some of the leading direct marketing stories of 2009. Not all are happy. We’ve saved the best for last. Read the rest of this entry »