I believe that well conceived loyalty programs provide both immediate and long-term benefits to the organization. But how should the direct marketer go about proving the effectiveness of Customer Relationship Marketing activities?

I recently sent a note to the President of one of my favorite advertising agencies. I congratulated him for his fabulous white paper expounding the positioning and branding services offered by his team.

To this day, I still see web management under the complete control if the IT department in many companies. It’s comparable to putting the print production team in charge of creative and marketing.

Finding and properly identifying DM talent remains a critical issue for organizations seeking people who have the necessary skill set to take their programs to the next level.

All talents are essential for generating response. Proper media selection along with a product or service that people will pay for at the offered price and great graphics to stimulate the recipient’s interest all contribute to the successful campaign

The typical production manager in an agency or on the client side possesses a good knowledge of printing, print production or broadcast advertising. But for the direct marketing discipline, this is just the beginning.

got a call from a printer who wanted some input on a direct mail package he was producing. His client had just completed a mailing and was concerned about why his 100,000-package mailing was not performing better.

There is a tendency for non-direct marketers to break out online marketing as something other than a new medium made to order for professional direct marketers. They treat it as a new business genre that highly experienced direct marketers cannot support or contribute to in some significant way.

In her October 6, 2007 New York Times article entitled The Web, Despite Its Promise, Fails to Snare Iowa Voters, Julie Bosman compares the effectiveness of the Internet in the presidential campaign in Iowa versus New Hampshire.