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New technology and digital experience make temporary retail stores really pop

Mercedes Cardona

Marketers are elevating their pop-up store strategy, as the concept of the temporary store matures.
 

Gift cards acquire new purpose for retailers as direct marketing vehicle

Mercedes Cardona

Retailers have now begun to embrace gift cards as both a product and a marketing vehicle, not just a way to grab stray dollars from indecisive shoppers.
 

Q&A: Diane Berry, SVP, Coveo

Diane Berry, SVP of Coveo, discusses how companies can use customer data to align service, sales and marketing.
 

Glean customer data pool for marketing intelligence

Joe Cordo, CMO, Extraprise

With 2012 approaching, there is a single, inescapable trend that we are seeing, no matter the marketing channel: big data.
 

Political marketers gear up for the 2012 season with interactive direct mail tools

The 2012 campaign season is already heating up, and while politicians will be buzzing about their social media and digital marketing tactics, direct mail is a stalwart for political campaign marketing that isn't going anywhere.
 

Brands step up free shipping game for holiday season e-commerce

Mercedes Cardona

This holiday shopping season could finally make free shipping the norm among multichannel retailers — and free returns could be next.
 

Hampton's PajamaJeans go viral with DRTV campaign

Mercedes Cardona

Hampton Direct, a direct marketer with previous direct response TV (DRTV) successes with the Total Pillow and the Wonder Hanger, faced a challenge with its 
PajamaJeans. Apparel is tricky to sell on direct channels, since the shopper can't feel the fabric or the fit of the garment.
 

Tracking DRTV orders leads to smarter media placement

Irv Brechner, EVP and partner, Acquirgy

With 300-plus direct response TV campaigns under our belt and more than 15 years of experience in online customer acquisition, I believe there's nothing more important than wrapping one's head around the critical roles of websites and search in DRTV campaigns.
 

Retailers roll out holiday 
multichannel offers early

Mercedes Cardona

Facing a fourth holiday of economic uncertainty, merchants this year will attempt to repeat the success they had attracting shoppers in 2010. Experts predict an onslaught of coupons, free shipping and multichannel efforts to draw in recession-weary consumers.
 

Utilize digital channels for 
direct mail that resonates

Karen Menachof, chief client officer, Catalyst

Direct mail is more interesting than ever and our ability to leverage it effectively to acquire, retain and grow customer relationships gets stronger all the time. It is more expensive than its electronic brethren.
 

RMU boosts enrollment with personalized mail campaign

Mercedes Cardona

Rider Dickerson used the variable printing capacities and incorporated marketing software by MindFireInc. to execute a campaign that included personalized letters and postcards to 385,000 prospects, followed up with targeted emails.
 

Secret agent character perks up a direct b-to-b campaign

Mercedes Cardona

Logicalis wanted to promote its data center and IT consulting solutions in a crowded marketplace, according to Amee BellWanzo, account services executive at Sudden Impact Marketing, which worked with Logicalis.
 

Drive incremental revenue by testing marketing offers

Jeffrey Boorjian, VP of marketing, Caesars Entertainment

We often discount our business turning to "couponing" as the last bastion in our marketing toolboxes to spike sales and momentarily hit revenue goals. Recently, like clockwork, we perused the cache of options we had stashed in our coffers, selected the one we forecasted would have the swiftest impact, mailed the offer and waited for the results.
 

Squeezed nonprofits look to direct mail

Mercedes Cardona

Charities struggling in a weak economy are required to do more with less toward their fundraising efforts, so they are sharpening their messages and audience-segmentation tactics when it comes to direct mail campaigns.
 

Behavioral targeting can be magic bullet to drive profit

Rick Witsell, VP of marketing, Alliant

If you could identify which names in your next mailing are likely to become high lifetime value customers — and which aren't — would you change your deployment strategy? 
That's the idea behind optimizing campaigns through list scoring.
 

College-oriented magazines boost response rate with app

Mercedes Cardona

Townsend Communications publishes magazines sent to the homes of high school juniors and seniors, aimed at helping colleges recruit incoming students. It also runs MyMajors.com, a site which leads students through a short quiz that recommends majors and matches them 
with colleges.
 

Brands digitize out-of-home campaigns to bolster consumer interaction levels

Billboards and installations usually remain static. However, after credit card company MasterCard rolled out its "Priceless New York" campaign in July, it wasn't the TV ads, the dedicated blog, the social media or online banner ads that were arguably the most direct digital components.
 

DRTV scraps low-rent ad form image to embrace interactivity on Web platforms

Mercedes Cardona

It's not just about 800-numbers anymore. Direct response TV, once seen as a low-rent ad form, is quickly gaining momentum, as leading national advertisers embrace the medium and integrate it with other digital platforms.
 

Church marketer mails faster with automated presorting

Mercedes Cardona

Outreach Inc., one of the nation's largest providers of church-outreach programs, needed help during crunch times — especially around Easter and Christmas, its two top mailing periods. During Easter, it mails from 6 million to 10 million postcards, requiring employee overtime and sometimes outsourcing to meet deadlines.
 

New accounting rules will improve your loyalty books

Kelly Hlavinka, managing partner, Colloquy

Reward certificates, rebates, points and miles are well- known marketing tactics that have become standard operating procedure in the competitive travel and 
hospitality field. So it's fitting that a set of standard practices governing how companies account for incentives is about to be adopted in the US.
 

Discount mindset drives marketer deals

Martha Spizziri

Two years of deal-seeking and a faltering economic recovery mean consumers won't stop looking for discounts, and offline deals will remain an important tactic for marketers, say industry experts.
 

Targeted direct mail exceeds paid search advertising ROI

Mercedes Cardona

Commerce Payment Systems, a provider of credit card processing solutions, was prospecting for new accounts mainly through paid search, but its costs were rising sharply, and CEO Michael Mendlowitz began to reexamine the search marketing strategy.
 

Richard Tooker, VP and solutions architect, KBM Group

Direct marketers are able to personalize consumer experiences across multiple touchpoints with the advent of digital marketing and new software packages. Customers who visit a website, for example, experience a personalized encounter that assembles the Web page relevant to the customer's relationship.
 

Location-based apps increase consumer interaction

Brands such as Burger King Corp., United Parcel Service of America (UPS) and Hotels.com are adopting in-app ads, capitalizing on the growing number of consumers using smartphones and the deep engagement provided by mobile applications.
 

Rand McNally drives database with road show

While the mobile marketer crowd is abuzz about the latest location-based marketing tools, "old-fashioned" location-based event promotions are hitting the road and helping marketers effectively build their in-house databases.
 

Data mining helps UN credit union sell global credit cards

Mercedes Cardona

The United Nations Federal Credit Union (UNFCU), a nonprofit financial institution serving more than 90,000 United Nations agency staffers, retirees and their families, wanted to launch a Visa "smart card" aimed at individuals who travel frequently overseas.
 

Is marketing data quality driven by visions of green?

Beatriz Santin, director of marketing and product, Experian QAS

Hundreds of articles, webinars and materials have focused in the last few years on how marketers can become more environmentally friendly. While many organizations want to be considered green marketers with a reputation as good stewards of a healthy environment, are green goals really a driving factor behind marketing?
 

Paper, ink prices rise, industry more troubled by postal hike

Mercedes Cardona

War and natural disasters won't slow the rise in printing costs. Conflicts in the Middle East, especially the Libyan civil war, drove oil prices from $90 a barrel in early February to more than $112 in April, and that puts pressure on prices of raw materials, including many of the precursor ingredients for inks.
 

Track bottom line impact with ad call measurement

Bill Dinan, President, Telmetrics

Marketers rely on direct response consumer data to make strategic business decisions, and the explosion of media options has only increased the importance of measuring the quality of advertising results.
 

Distributor implements data management for more sales

Mercedes Cardona

The tough housing market has been a challenge for
companies such as BlueLinx Corp., a distributor of building products with more than 11,500 customers nationwide. It means merchandising products and services
efficiently is critical.
 

Direct mail, digital best combo in driving acquisition

The digitalization of marketing won't trigger the end of direct mail. For most marketers, a campaign's effectiveness is contingent upon marrying traditional direct 
marketing tactics with digital technology. That is particularly true for new customer acquisition tactics.
 

Hospice's segmentation leads to more relevant appeals

Mercedes Cardona

Capital Hospice, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit providing end-of-life care, wanted to create fundraising appeals that would attract larger gifts, while 
cutting back on mailing costs. DirectMail.com worked with Capital Hospice to define list selects and analyze appeal copy, first by segmenting the nonprofit's donor file.
 

Leverage interactive print methods while testing tech

Troy Forget, senior marketing manager, Staples Advantage

Consumers are inundated with printed promotional messages every day, ranging from brochures to fliers and postcards.
 

Despite rate hike, marketers remain loyal to mail

Mercedes Cardona

The postal rate increase coming this spring is not expected to have a significant effect on direct mail marketing plans this year, thanks to its size and timing.
 

WPS Health Insurance test campaign leads to profits

Mercedes Cardona

In summer 2010, after the passage of healthcare reform, WPS Health Insurance charged SeQuel Response with the launch of supplemental health insurance for retirees too young for Medicare.
 

Make direct mail center of integrated marketing plan

Meg Goodman, SVP and director of Client Service, UMarketing

As we move at light speed into a world that continually serves up new media options, we often look over the documented tenets of good, solid direct mail use in conjunction with an integrated campaign. A quick 
reminder never hurts.
 

Credit card mailers shift focus to rewards, acquisition

Alex Palmer

A stabilizing economy and an energized competitive environment has had credit card issuers out in full force, enticing potential new customers as well as current cardholders with rewards and new products in order to stand out.
 

Leverage telemarketing for higher profits, sales

Patrick McKenna, CEO, DMi Partners

A fundamental truth of online marketing is that not every customer can be generated solely through the Internet, and even fewer will be generated by their first interaction with an advertiser.
 

Quick response codes draw crowd at ImageOut festival

Alex Palmer

The ImageOut Festival in Rochester, NY has steadily grown in its 18-year history, most recently screening 87 films to more than 10,000 attendees last October. This year, the festival sought further expansion of its marketing efforts.
 

B-to-b marketers initiate consumer push

Alex Palmer

Single-cup coffee brewing company Keurig is well known for the brewers it sells to corporations.
 

Banish the bull and tell it like it is

Michael A. Brown

One would think that by now, the word "solution" would have run its course as a direct marketing and sales word.
 

Chico's marketing automation strategy pays dividends

Chico's FAS, a women's retail company, was having a hard time using customer data effectively.
 

Catalogers push free holiday shipping

Alex Palmer

This may be remembered as the season of free shipping. Many catalogers are offering free delivery, often with no minimum-spending limit, to get the attention of holiday shoppers.
 

Catalog role is comms, not sales

Mercedes Cardona

Retailers continue to rely on catalogs this holiday season, but the catalog role is changing.
 

Direct mail gains new potency as online marketing evolves

Andy Cutler, Chief strategy officer, Mercury121

Direct mail continues to be a very viable channel, but only if the direct marketing fundamentals are applied.
 

KeyBank finds templates key to mail success

KeyBank, a division of KeyCorp, was spending an inordinate amount of time and budget on the creative portion of its direct marketing efforts to consumers and small business customers.
 

Digital marketers look offline to drive Web sales

While no one argues the importance of good digital marketing programs, some marketers have turned to more traditional forms of direct marketing to cut through the online clutter.
 

Case Study: US Census surpasses goals using targeted campaigns

Alex Palmer

Tapped by the US Census Bureau, Draftfcb New York led a massive marketing campaign aimed at making sure the increasingly diverse US population sent in its 2010 Census forms, while keeping labor costs for door-to-door staff to a minimum.
 

Media fragmentation helps focus marketing dollars

Robert Yallen, CEO, The Inter/Media Group of Companies

Direct response marketers can either waste time lamenting about how difficult it is get a critical mass audience, or they can take advantage of today's marketplace fragmentation.