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Did Direct Marketing Swing the Election? by John Miglautsch

ClintonBestCase“President Barack Obama transformed modern day campaigning by elevating the importance and use of data. Since then campaigns have prioritized it. Hillary Clinton has been building her data operation since she launched her campaign, but Trump has largely dismissed its importance.” NBC News May 31 2016

“Analytics will win votes this year. Science, as it did in 2012, is playing an important role for mass voter persuasion in the U.S. presidential race. It’s a numbers game: Predictive analytics targets campaign activities, strengthening a campaign’s army of volunteers by driving its activities more optimally.” Scientific American Sep 15, 2016 Continue reading “Did Direct Marketing Swing the Election? by John Miglautsch”

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So You Think You’re Doing Direct Marketing?

The golden age of direct marketing has arrived. Nearly all advertising and sales are “interactive” and “measurable”. At the same time, attendance and enthusiasm for local and national direct marketing trade shows is almost dead compared to 20 years ago.  (I wrote this article almost 20 years ago, as the Internet gurus claimed everything would change.)

Since 1968 the definition of direct marketing has been examined and refined. Here is a composite definition from 28 text books: “Direct marketing is a database-driven interactive process of directly communicating with targeted customers or prospects using any medium to obtain a measurable response or transaction via one or multiple channels.” (reconciled from 28 published textbook variations, Scovotti & Spiller) Continue reading “So You Think You’re Doing Direct Marketing?”

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Welcome to the *NEW* WDMA

Several past Presidents of the WDMA board got together for the 30th anniversary meetup.  We weren’t exactly sure what happened to the WDMA but around the turn of the millennium, we all started feeling pretty irrelevant.  And if Direct Marketing is just about data & measurement, then anyone who can hook up Google Analytics is already doing it.  Are we irrelevant?

This week I had a long conversation  with someone involved with the original Direct Mail Advertising Association – which became the DMA in 1983 and  now has been re-branded as the Data & Marketing Association.   I guess its now just about data & marketing… ?  Well here, we’re about Direct Marketing, the most powerful force in your advertising and sales arsenal. Continue reading “Welcome to the *NEW* WDMA”