DM Talent Scarcer than Ever

Written By Ted Grigg

What do today's employers want when they are looking for direct response talent? Are they making wise choices when they interview and hire direct marketers? What do you think?

In a recent DMNews article, the author writes about an interview with Jerry Bernhart, President of Bernhart Associates. In this article Mr. Bernhart, a leader in DM searches, mentions that in their last quarterly survey company survey, about 25% of the respondents were having a very difficult time and 60% were having some difficulty filling direct marketing positions. Nobody said that they were having no problems.

But in the truly interesting part of his interview, Mr. Bernhart said that direct mail expertise was no longer the demand leader, but new media such as e-commerce and multichannel marketing direct marketers were the high demand areas.

This comes at no surprise, but I have always wondered how direct marketers were viewed as "direct mail" channel specialists only in the first place.

I don't know about your past experiences, but my direct marketing background is filled with multichannel experience. They include DRTV, alternate media, print, telemarketing, database marketing and yes, even direct mail as required either singly or in combination with other media to yield the needed results. My clients are asking for more guidance in e-commerce and relational database planning than ever before driven primarily by the need to manage and understand how to balance the media mix.

Here's my point. Direct marketers are not media specialists, they are direct marketing strategists who should be media agnostic. Balancing media expenditures does not mean that the direct marketer specializes in one channel over another. In my estimation, we tend to recommend what we know rather than what the goals require. So knowing too much about any single channel actually weakens the direct marketer's objectivity.

Even direct mail specialists do not know as much about lettershop processes as lettershop suppliers. The printers and package formatters certainly provide guidance that far exceeds the tactical knowledge available to the direct mail specialist. What about postal regulations? No direct mail expert worth their salt knows everything there is to know about postal regulations. And what about list knowledge and creative development that goes into beating controls? Then there is the testing strategy, the analytics and interpretation of the response information.

Clearly, the successful direct marketer is a generalist who leads the strategy regardless of the channels involved.

So this focus on channel expertise shows tactical thinking rather than a direct marketers' strategic leadership.

What are your thoughts about this so-called redefined direct marketer? Is the talented, strategically driven direct marketer somehow no longer needed? What are clients really looking for in their people? New thinking or just tactical implementation?


Ted Grigg
What Ted does best is increase response by beating controls, applying multiple channels to target markets, profiling customer databases and generally improving sales results using deep direct marketing principles. Regard Ted as your personal “think-tank” for your direct marketing planning and strategy development. After analyzing several hundred million dollars of direct response testing in all channels, he brings with him the knowledge accumulated from seeing what tends to work and what does not. Having worked on both the agency and client side of direct marketing, Ted understands the unique challenges faced by agencies and their clients. Agencies need to sell themselves and deliver sales results. And clients not only require results, but need ideas they can implement while focusing on tracking response using a relational database. If Ted brings nothing else to the table, by profiling customer databases and creating response propensity models, he quickly becomes the clients’ expert on their own customers. His formal training includes a BA from Abilene Christian University and two years of graduate work at Texas Tech University. For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, Ted developed a revolutionary direct mail format that beat most standing direct mail controls for this company. He also generated more profitable business for this firm by expanding compiled list circulation of less than 10% to more than 30% of total direct mail circulation within a year. (Insurance business generated by direct mail demonstrated higher persistency than customers coming from other media such as print and DRTV.) Ted’s plan and implementation of Medicare lead generation campaigns for over 60 regional and national HMO/PPO organizations combined multiple channels that surpassed some sales projections by as much as 60%. Additional industry experience over the last 30 years includes B2B or B2C for finance, securities, home security, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, government, technology, nonprofit, retail, transportation, communications, and multiple categories in the services industry. As the founder of Wyse Direct (a division for Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, OH), he successfully launched and branded a new technology product for Seiko-Mead by supporting a nationwide sales team with a predictable flow of qualified sales leads. While a VP of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, Ted acted as the direct marketing strategist who refocused the agency’s culture to attract new commercial and fundraising accounts. At the time, Grizzard was essentially a direct mail fund raising production operation. His leadership and team building effectiveness prepared Grizzard for the eventual Omnicom acquisition and Grizzard’s successful integration into Omnicom’s large group of advertising agencies. An independent DM consultant, Ted continues to write numerous articles and conduct webinars on direct marketing techniques. He also wrote The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan — A Step-by-Step Guide publishing it through Executive Enterprises in New York City. During his youth, Ted was raised in Lille, France with his missionary family attending French schools becoming fluent in reading and writing French. Away from the job, Ted is a computer geek, blogger and science fiction buff!
http://www.dmcgresults.com
Previous

Let’s Talk About Agency Relationships
Next

What typically pulls best? Long or short copy?