Let's examine one of the country's most well-known brands, AARP, and end our discussion of "the new direct" by exploring the integration of social media into today's direct marketing campaigns.
The definition of "direct marketing" is changing. BlueCross BlueShield is a brand that understands that.
The long-standing definition of direct marketing can just be tossed out the window. The journey from brand to direct and back.
How can leaders build sustainable cultures and business models? Have a purpose.
A little bit of hype, a dose of intrigue, and a healthy portion of engagement can help any brand in the quest to revive their image and get in front of new fans.
What the new focus on what gay players mean to marketers and pro sports.
How do you determine the best way to engage with each customer—especially when you have thousands or even millions of customers?
Big Data can't singlehandedly deliver all it promises to marketers. This is especially true on Facebook.
Having a beautifully designed website works wonders for impressing your visitors and feeling good about what was created—but does it drive sales?
How do you make your company stand out when its competitors are big names like Google, Microsoft and Apple? Prezi's head of marketing was faced with this very challenge.
While social media should certainly play a key role in the modern B2B sales process, social alone won't solve all the woes of today's sellers.
Customer satisfaction is a key component of a successful business, whether that enterprise is brick-and-mortar or online.
The Web is becoming more mobile. Marketers must realize and embrace blended desktop and mobile search and SEO campaigns to remain competitive.
The playbook for turning data science into business growth.
At every touchpoint, consumers are giving up information about themselves—information you can use to optimize their experiences.
By combining the best of digital marketing with the power of the physical store, expect traditional retailers to not only survive, but to thrive.
Creating the conditions for success in the new marketing reality.
From day-to-day media buying to big picture planning, attribution provides marketers with the analysis and recommendations they need to continuously improve marketing results and ROI.
Search creates an illusion that it is more effective than it is in reality.
Market a quality experience, not discounts, and then live up to your promise. The rest is inevitable.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's new book has garnered some harsh criticism. And do you know who the strongest critics are? Women.
How brands can avoid being the dumb bounder and use the velvet rope as an advantage.
It's time for digital marketers to understand the role of performance marketing and appreciate the value it can offer their brands.
What my mother and my favorite brands should have in common.
Future sales depend on knowing what your shoppers want—without even asking them.
With celebrity guys hosting popular cooking, DIY, decorating, and landscaping shows, the stigma around "male domesticity" is changing—and marketers need to take notice.
The biggest complaints lodged against banner ads are that they are intrusive and lack creativity—and worst of all are ignored by the overwhelming majority of Web users.
In this age, content marketing extends beyond the simplicity of creating, publishing, and publicizing content. Your content has to be dynamic.
Lessons learned from the desktop and applied to mobile.
More and more, consumers are bombarded with messages—what stands out is how marketers are slowly taking up the concepts of offer optimization.
The mobile platform offers unique advantages for grabbing a user's attention with the flexibility for more advanced designs, but don't totally disregard what you've learned in the print world.
Brand willing to hijack their own image in order to reinvent themselves will thrive—and other observations on the ground from SXSW 2013.
The average website includes components from eight or more different hosts—but as response times increase, interactions begin to slow and dissatisfaction rises, resulting in a staggering business impact.
Lead management is evolving and marketers need to figure out how to integrate social media throughout their campaigns from first touch to close of business.
Deliver relevance to customers through segmentation—or watch them defect.
What then drives the more than 40% of shoppers reported to engage in showrooming away from the store and onto the virtual sales floor?
App developers and brands need to work to remain as relevant as possible—or risk having their creations end up in the virtual dustbin.
Relevance is the key to driving marketing campaign performance: getting the right message to the right audience at the right time. How do you make that happen?
Marketers are well aware of the value of literally reaching people in their pockets via mobile—but the one-off isn't working anymore.
The U.S. Hispanic market is growing by leaps and bounds—so why haven't many advertisers determined a way to reach out to it yet?
Leads, leads, and more leads—it's a refrain we hear daily from our existing and prospective national brand clients.
Having marketers as your audience is a challenge because they're smart and know all the tricks.
5 easy steps to identify the "real" influencers to target in your latest direct marketing campaign.
Targeting is a graceful exchange between consumer and brand when done right and a clunky, embarrassing gesture when it misses the mark.
Texting, the written word writ large, is here to stay—at last until the next big shift.
The Ravens did what they could to win the game, but how did the advertising stand up to capturing our attention?
While questions remain about whether flash sales can be both a successful business model and an effective marketing strategy, investors seem optimistic.
Adopting a sandbox for your website will offset many of the risks and costs associated with change—but most marketing teams don't have a serious one in place.
The the how, the why—and the what does it mean to you—of Facebook's Graph search.
How can online businesses provide the personalized and dynamic experience that consumers expect? By treating each site visitor like the unique individuals they are.
With social and mobile continuing to grow at astounding rates, marketers can't afford to ignore either of the two giants any longer—especially when it comes to conversion rates.
There are several essential components you must include in your marketing strategy if you want to construct a complete direct mail marketing system. Let's take a look.
As the old, old saying goes, every coin has two sides and you may need to have a look at both sides of video email before actually including it into your marketing plan.
Infographics have become an immensely popular way to convey stats, data, and other useful information.
There are two major issues our clients face with A/B testing: Tackling the art of pre-testing and the speed at which marketers are able to access results.
Marketers are so focused on what product to market, they're overlooking how to optimize the marketing message that goes with the product.
There's little doubt mobile marketing is the future of direct response marketing. Here's why it's starting to look like the most effective direct response marketing tool ever.
Mobile marketing is the next big thing...but it's also still relatively nascent and mobile marketers are making mistakes.
Partnership...and the three ways you can tell if that word means anything.
Big Data: Is it good or is it bad? Should it be used by vendors or consumers? The answer is a resounding 'yes.'
Creativity is often considered a magical talent, possessed only by those "creative types." But we all have a right side of the brain.
Stores, both brick-and-mortar and online, want our money and try to seduce us for it—except now, in the age of Big Data, it's easier for the ones online to be masters of seduction.
On a quest for the social sweet spot—the perfect mix between time-tested one-to-many media and new, engagement-driving one-to-one social strategies.
Regulators are seeking more transparency throughout our ecosystem.
A brand's ability to utilize nostalgia in the social media space can assist in maintaining continuity of its evolution over time—if used properly.
Tips for bringing a little cheer to the unpredictable and somewhat dismal holiday sales results brands have become accustomed to over the past four years.
Larger retailers may have deep marketing pockets—but they should also keep an eye on their smaller industry counterparts for some valuable lessons.
Dry, tidy, "professional sounding" articles, videos, and photos don't connect with your customers anymore.
As a response mechanism for a DRTV spot, is the old-fashioned 800 number better than the new URL?
Marketers should spend more time learning about their customers and less time inhaling the sweet smoke of their own overcooked, overdone marketing slang.
It doesn't take an advanced degree in economics to crunch the numbers currently plaguing the magazine industry—but partnership marketing can save the day.
These quick tips and tricks make all the difference between closing the next sale or ending up in the junk folder.
Why payment now belongs with product, price, place, and promotion as a key decision lever.
For app marketers looking to improve performance, text messaging can be the key to supercharging any app marketing strategy.
If your mobile site is not ready for Cyber Monday, don't worry—there are things you can do any time to get started on the road to optimization success.
For digital coupons there may be no more perfect platform than Pinterest—particularly in the coveted demographic of decision-making moms.
With consumers in control of communication, it's up to businesses to harness social media and initiate new sales and service models. It's time more companies got on board.
Customer experience is king when it comes to travel this holiday season.
What does 'thank you' have to do with direct marketing, Quite a lot, actually.
You want to deliver on digital's promise of anytime, anywhere engagement, but also tie your investments to business results. Here are five tips to get that done.
The first order of online business for any direct marketer is to chase eyeballs. And eyeballs, it turns out, are an increasingly moving target.
Ryan Partnership's design work for Perrier stays true to the brand's personality—refreshing, premium, modern, and clean.
The online marketing industry is evolving, and digital marketing agencies need to keep abreast of the changes.
It's all about visual content. We all know that—but why don't we put it into practice?
A great agency culture is more than Mustache Wednesdays. It's about getting and down and dirty, in a good way.
In-stream video may feel like a bit of a mystery, but advertisers are finally ready to dive in and try it. Here are some tips on how to ease into in-stream.
If the customer wants to do a marketing campaign and no one asks why, then maybe that customer hasn't had the benefit of expert outside advice.
In a time when traditional advertising and marketing strategies are losing effectiveness, guided selling gives partner marketing teams a more effective way to utilize MDF to educate consumers, increase conversions, and drive lifetime value.
Over the past couple of years, we've beaten email with the ugly stick—but it's really the near perfect tool for delivering the content that creates the lasting value that converts leads into loyal customers.
It's important to contextualize brands in the countries in which they were born—at least until they are truly accepted as global brands.
As with everything, there are best practices when it comes to optimizing online marketing spend for highest customer lifetime value, revenue, or profit.
In any online marketing role you often have performance targets set both in terms of volume and cost-per-action. But many online marketers struggle with how to measure lifetime customer value.
While the younger generation is definitely more comfortable with technology, especially new technology, don't mistake young people's energy and zeal in this arena for marketing savvy.
Retailers have marked down summer-related goods to make room for pens, pencils and backpacks—indicating that it's time to kick-start back-to-school shopping.
Though marketers have started to leverage the clout of mom bloggers, these women have the untapped potential to act as substantial brand advocates for their communities.
Everyone is talking about Big Data—and judging from my social streams and much of the media coverage, I'm afraid many don't seem to have a clear understanding about what it is, or even if Big Data is in fact what they are dealing with.
Interactive video formats used to be a niche specialty—but there's no more fertile a time than now for marketers to seize the opportunity of video interactivity.
In the early days of the Web, the "online marketplace" seemed to level the playing field between Fortune 500 B2B organizations and smaller companies. Then, the online world exploded at a remarkable pace.
I've been going to Dunkin' Donuts for a while, but it wasn't until recently that I felt like an appreciated customer.
Company of the week Fairfield Marketing Group, Inc.Concerned about growth? With over 25 years experience in the industry, the list experts at Fairfield Marketing Group possess the know-how to help immediately improve any domestic or international direct marketing effort. |
What's in our mailbox this month: fitness postcards from Retro Fitness, American Woman Fitness Centers, Union's United Taekwondo Academy, and Bally Total Fitness. (We're totally pumped.)
Social data can improve a brand's bottom line and customer relationships. Just ask brands Infiniti and Diamond Nexus.
Here are three must-have data sets that every marketer should include in his or her email strategy.
