Multichannel Marketing for B2B Marketers

Wake up, b2b marketers: You’re letting your b2c counterparts steal the play in social media.

Of the b2b companies surveyed by Equation Research, 38% include social media their marketing mix. But 21% do not, or are not planning to do so.

In contrast, 71% of the b2c companies polled are active in this area, along with 59% of the firms that identify themselves as both b2b and b2c. Only 9% are inactive. Business to business direct marketing firms are behind on both these fronts. continue reading…

Ask the average direct marketer to name the industry’s pioneers, and they will probably say Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. But there’s an important omission in that list: National Cash Register Co., a B2B concern that was sending targeted mail way before the big catalog houses tried it.

The company was founded in 1880 by John H. Patterson, a store owner in Coalton, OH. He had bought one of the new-fangled machines, and was so impressed with it that he purchased the factory that made it. continue reading…

Industrial marketers are cutting back on trade shows and spending more online. Those are among the findings of a survey done by GlobalSpec, the B2B search engine company. continue reading…

Josephine Messina

You think things are tough these days? Talk to Josephine Messina, our vice president of direct marketing services, who started her career 25 years ago at Fred Woolf—in production. continue reading…

Is there anyone more slow on the uptake than the poor British direct marketer? Send an inquiry to one, and you’ve got a 25% chance of never getting a reply, according to a study by the British DMA.

The DMA emailed 100 companies to request brochures. A quarter failed to respond. And the average reaction time for those that did fulfil was 3.6 days (although that’s a slight improvement over 2005). continue reading…