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November 30, 2009 Issue of Direct Marketing News

Features

Connecting to the customer: A conversation on the future of direct and digital

DMNews' Cara Wood and Carol Krol sat down with marketing leaders in November 2009 to discuss how direct and digital channels are positioned to move ...

30 years of remarkable change

The direct marketing model connects marketers directly to consumers. That has not changed in the 30 years DMNews has been in print. In the past ...

David Ogilvy

The night I watched the ad guys on Mad Men's Sterling Cooper agency talk about David Ogilvy as a threat, because he had written Confessions ...

Direct 'Mad Men' talk of transformation

Direct marketing takes the spotlight as the importance of data rises and the Internet transforms agency process and infrastructure

Ever-evolving data

The list industry has always been about fresh and innovative ways to look at data and use it to help markets understand their prospects. As ...

CRM initiatives balance privacy and relevance

In today's world, where consumer privacy and legislation is a hot topic — especially with the proliferation of digital channels — there's one thing that ...

The highs and lows of direct mail

Over the past 30 years, direct mail has seen tremendous growth due to worksharing and personalization. However, because the channel's growth has slowed recently, marketers ...

As the printing press turns

Advances in printing technology have already dramatically changed the face of direct mail in the past three decades. The biggest issue printers face now is ...

Direct Marketing Legends

The giants of direct marketing need no introduction. These great innovators in the direct and digital marketing industry have one thing in common: Each and ...

Bob Stone

Stone & Adler began December 1, 1966 as "an advertising agency providing mail order and direct mail programs." I joined four months later and spent ...

Lester Wunderman

While I was growing up in this business, Lester was one of my idols. He's the man who in a 1967 address at Massachussets Institute ...

Lee Epstein

Lee Epstein taught me — and countless others — what it really means to give back. Because of Lee, I always answer my own phone, ...

Lillian Vernon

Ten years ago, my husband and I were returning from a trip to Indonesia and stopped off in Singapore. Literally upon arrival, the small-world paradigm ...

Stan Rapp

If anyone ever asks, "How did direct response climb from a marketing byway to a position of dominance?" you can answer in two words: Stan ...

Herschell Gordon Lewis

The continuing story of Herschell Gordon Lewis already encompasses two lifetimes. In each of them he has played a bigger than life role in shaping ...

Ed Burnett

Ed Burnettloved lists. He believed in data. He was convinced that if one would only commit to studious analysis of the data, the mysteries of ...

Cataloging to multichannel retailing: A long, strange trip

The practice of marketing goods directly to consumers looked significantly different three decades ago — and credit cards, 1-800 numbers and the dawn of the ...

Innovation in the inbox

Electronic mail — better known as e-mail — has  evolved since it was first used for marketing purposes back in the early 1990s. Mainly used ...

Searching the net for ROI

Search engine marketing has exploded over the past decade into a nearly $10 billion annual business.

Dialing for dollars

Over the past 30 years, there have been incredible shifts in how telemarketing is because of technology and legislation. Outbound calls had their heyday in ...

Ron Popeil

There are inventors, there are pitchmen, and then there is Ron Popeil. Ron transformed the role of salesman/inventor into a celebrity personality in a way ...

Tim Litle

I have the unique perspective of having been at Tim Litle's side for all of his four decades in direct marketing. As a school kid ...

The digital ad frontier

The birth of the ad network came about in the mid- 1990s, when it became apparent that Web media was infinite compared to traditional advertising ...

But wait... there's more to DRTV spots

Direct response TV has been around nearly as long as its medium. But its vintage doesn't mean it has gone out of style. DRTV pros ...

1-800-Flowers

Since it launched as a telemarketing company in 1986, 1-800-Flowers has bloomed as a direct response floral delivery business. In the 1980s, the brand focused ...

Amazon.com

As one of the first e-commerce companies to open up shop on the Internet, Amazon.com has grown to become one of the largest retailers in ...

American Express

Any brand still thriving after more than a century and a half of existence has likely balanced reinvention with a consistent, stable brand message. Such ...

AOL

Once known as America Online, AOL long ago was locked in a race with competitors Prodigy and Compuserve to become the most widespread Internet service ...

Book of the Month Club

Few brands have been impacted more by the digital revolution than the Book-of-the-Month Club. Yet the brand's survival after 83 years is a testament to ...

Capital One

Since it was founded in 1988 as a credit card issuer, Capital One has become one of the 10 largest consumer banks in the US, ...

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 and sold for five cents a glass. In the decades that followed, its marketing pushes had both brand and direct ...

Dell

Founded by Michael Dell as a computer manufacturer, Dell was in the business of selling PCs direct to consumers by 1990. Today the brand is ...

Ebay

EBay placed a winning bid on consumers' appetites for buying and selling goods to each other. The online auctioneering Web site and brand has also ...

FedEx

Despite a rocky beginning that saw it struggling to pay bills and find funding, Federal Express was delivering 65,000 packages per day by the early ...

Fingerhut

While Fingerhut was a powerhouse in the catalog space throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the current decade has seen the business face many difficulties. The ...

Harrah's

The approach of Harrah's Entertainment to CRM is so sophisticated that the company has a so-called customer valuation patent. US Patent No. 6,993,494, granted in ...

Hilton

Hilton Worldwide has become an iconic brand in the hospitality industry not just domestically, but around the world. Hilton owns more than 3,400 hotels in ...

Home Depot

The Home Depot boasts on its corporate Web site that it is "the fastest growing retailer in US history" since it was founded in 1978. ...

HSN

The first of the major 24-hour home shopping channels, Home Shopping Network launched in 1982 with Roy Speer and Lowell Paxson providing financial backing. Originally ...

IBM

IBM, a company that has been in the technology business since 1911, has shifted its business model to focus on business technology and IT services. ...

JetBlue

JetBlue has shown its ability to distinguish itself in a competitive and commoditized industry. A central tenet is its laser focus on the customer, whether ...

LL Bean

In the 1980s, customer service emerged as an important catalog issue once consumers started shopping multiple books and realizing the experience could vary greatly. This ...

Netflix

A relative newcomer to the direct marketing scene, Netflix began in 1997 as a DVD distributor and launched its DVD-by-mail subscription model in 1999. The ...

QVC

Joseph Segel was already an established direct marketer in 1986. His previous company, the Franklin Mint, had been selling collectibles through the mail for 20 ...

Orvis

How does a fly fishing company transition to an e-commerce world? Such is the story of Orvis, which was founded before the Civil War as ...

PCH

Publishers Clearing House spent the first 30 years of its existence with magazines as its bread and butter. By 1980, it was America's largest seller ...

Pfizer

It's hard to imagine a commercial break without an ad for a pharmaceutical product, but there was a time before they were ubiquitous. Leading the ...

Reader's Digest

With 50 editions in more than 60 countries and 21 languages, Reader's Digest is the world's most widely read magazine. Founded in 1922, the brand ...

Sears

The Sears brand began in the 1880s, and was built by sending catalogs to rural communities. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the brand ...

Time-Life

Long considered a pioneer in direct marketing, Time-Life was founded in 1961. The media company gained worldwide popularity in the pre-Amazon.com days as a publisher ...

Toys "R" Us

The Toys "R" Us brand was different from its onset, when founder Charles Lazarus made the decision in 1957 to turn the "R" in its ...

Verizon

Formed in 2000 by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, Verizon is a relative babe compared to most other brands in direct marketing. While ...

Wal-Mart

Founded in 1962, Wal-Mart discount store had the same tagline for 19 of the last 30 years. Its "always low prices" mantra and iconic starred ...

Zappos

When Zappos.com entered the online retail landscape a decade ago, there were still many people who thought you couldn't sell shoes online because consumers generally ...

From AOL's mass-mailed diskettes and CD-ROMs to JetBlue's customer-retention efforts, most well-known US and international corporations have used direct marketing, e-commerce and digital efforts to ...