Talent Dilemmas in Watered-Down DM

Written By Ted Grigg

DM News printed this article I wrote for them in their September 7, 2007 issue. I wanted to share this with you to see if it hit a chord with you as I did with several people sent emails related to this article. I would appreciate your comments and perspectives about any portion of this article. You can view the electronic version on DM News' web site at http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-opinion/columns/42328.html

Ted
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“Branding, positioning, direct marketing and even merchandising are so integrated in today’s business strategy that they have watered down the full potential of the direct marketing discipline. Contrary to popular belief, this dilution may be hurting the careers of seasoned direct marketing strategists as well as the future of all direct marketers.

Knowledgeable direct marketers understand the critical importance of the brand and product positioning in generating short and long-term profits. But now, more than ever, direct marketers are routinely relegated to tactical rather than strategic roles.

Direct marketing professionals struggle with their companies to persuade them to embrace the testing strategy or invest in relational databases that allow them to improve their return on investment.

Otherwise competent executives unwisely continue to roll out campaigns without testing them first.

They unwittingly squander future growth for short-term sales. They neglect the opportunities to invest in the learning available from the relational database their marketers so desperately need to maximize the effectiveness of their strategies. In some high-intensity direct marketing environments, the organization continues to expand budgets without the presence of a true relational database.

It is clear that an increasing number of companies have a hard time separating direct marketing strategists from direct marketing tacticians.

My friend, who is a recruiter, said that this is true because companies now want one person to do the job two or three people used to do. So the first things to go are people management skills and adequate resources for strategic development.

Additionally, there is increasing murkiness about what direct marketing really does. The direct response strategy pervades the marketing environment to such an extent that it has become the accepted key strategy minus disciplined execution that includes testing and reliable back end analytics.


For example, there is a tendency today to view direct marketing executive roles as media channel specific rather than strategy specific.

The common misdirection in staffing high-level direct marketers is to classify them as media experts in, say, direct mail, DRTV, print, e-mail or the Internet. Just because a given company’s core medium today is direct mail, for example, does not mean that other media may not displace it from core to support medium with ongoing testing. Seek out direct marketers who are media agnostic and move comfortably from one media channel to another. The experienced direct marketing leader focuses on lifetime value and share of customer.

Another major strategic issue is the strong direct marketer who seeks to create customer buying experiences that maximize lifetime value. The skilled direct marketer assures that the largest number of customers as possible become centers of influence and missionaries for the company’s products.

So the concept of CRM runs deep through the veins of all competent direct marketers. This capability transcends software knowledge and manifests itself in the form of a strategic mind that asks what, when, why and how customers respond to maximize the company’s ROI. In fact, the well-founded direct marketer understands the interrelationship between acquisition and retention.

The professional direct marketer’s skill-set includes database marketing development to facilitate one-to-one communications and tracking. He or she knows what and how to test media, media synergies, offers, pricing, creative executions and other essential elements. This type of testing improves the cost per lead, the cost per sale and ultimately, the cost per customer.

Great direct marketers demonstrate a proclivity for gathering data, analyzing it and distilling testable hypotheses.

They know the most about the customers’ behavior patterns and how they will most likely respond to the company’s offerings. Furthermore, their understanding of the customer database makes them uniquely qualified as one of the company’s leading customer advocates.

The bottom line is that the discipline of direct marketing insists on a strategic perspective. So when you look at your people and the way your company seeks out direct marketing talent, make sure you get broad-view strategists at the top rather than tactical specialists.“

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
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