It's a reality now that marketers and their DM partners are feeling the effects of shifting, even declining, budgets, and many are nimbly making tweaks to their business models. InfoUSA is like many others who are grappling with the slow­ing growth of the direct mail business, and it has worked to build up its technological capabilities, enhancing the power of its database offerings.

As this week's feature on AXA Equitable Life illus­trates, b-to-b marketing can be all the more powerful if market­ers remember that the business community they're targeting is still, when it comes down to it, made up of consumers.

I've had several interesting conversations over the past couple of weeks pondering a tricky subject: What is the definition of a DM agency? It used to be easier to define. Mostly, they were defined by what they were not — the branding ad agency, which controlled and advocated for broadcast spend. These were the data guys, who liked to send stuff through the mail.

Two pieces of research came out last week that attempted to quantify some of the impact the credit crunch has had on the direct marketing world. Synovate's Mail Monitor subsidiary cited a 14% year-on-year decrease in credit card direct mail volume in Q4 2007. And Mintel Comperemedia brings in a more nuanced point that the annual decrease in credit card solicitations to non-customers from 2006 to 2007 is 11%, but loyalty-based offers sent to current customers actually increased by 16%.

As the tributes pour in for Andi Emerson, the indomitable founder of the John Caples Awards who passed away last week, we are given the opportunity to mull the importance of creativity in the DM world — one that is often seen from the outside to be made up of cold facts, numbers and little else.

Following the recent beginning-of-the-year prognosti­cations that marketing analysts shared, you'd be forgiven for predicting that 2008 might be a slightly quieter year for mar­keting M&A than the blockbuster year that was 2007. But last week's news that InfoUSA was acquiring the highly respected firm Direct Media not only started the year off with a decent bang; it also yielded a promise from chairman and CEO Vin Gupta that the industry would further fuse. Not many people could convincingly state that a key corporate strategy was to "consolidate the direct marketing industry," but Gupta defi­nitely has the heft to be one of them.

This week's Expert Advice column on page 29 of our Jan. 21 print issue raises the question of whether college education matters when making hiring decisions. Our expert submits that experience trumps everything — but undergraduate candidates with analytically and/or mathematically focused degrees have strong appeal.

This week's Gloves Off debate about the future of Internet commerce and communication suggests that consumers have gotten to the point of asking for exactly what they want, not only from a product standpoint but also from a promotion standpoint. With the rise of targeting and analytic technology, the onus is now on the marketer to catch up and to listen. To that end, I'm excited about what the National Retail Federation show might have in store next week.

As we end the first week back to work after the new year, playing with our Wiis and iPhones, the prevalence of the latter as gift items this past holiday season ably illustrates the point that many analysts are making: mobile marketing will come into its own in 2008.

A big frustration for direct marketers is the stark contradiction in consumers' attitudes toward the medium. Many denigrate direct mail, describing it in such terms as "junk mail," while at the same time happily ordering from catalogs, responding to offers and donating money to causes that solicit through the mail channel.