Last night, I gave a speech at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami for Chris Ramey, who heads up the Luxury Marketing Council here in the Southeast. My subject: Luxury Marketers are Looking with new interest at DM…with good reason.

They are looking at DM (Direct Marketing) because it is a science, and you can track your results. In the years that I worked at major agencies, many clients looked down their noses at DM, as if their product or service was to “high end” to be sold in that way. Now, things have changed.

First the internet changed the direct relationship between buyers and brands. Now prospects can comparison shop, look at products closely and buy them immediately. It is really direct mail…on steroids.

Second, the luxury brands realize that word-of-mouth advertising is a key element of their success, so they’re popping up on websites, and on social media…like Facebook and Twitter.

Third, Luxury brands want to know what their ROI is, and what’s working and what isn’t. They can’t always see the results of on-page advertising, or even their commercials. In direct mail, email, or website…you see the stats right away ,and can tell how many are converting to sales now. In this time of economic uncertainty…DM is a science that can provide measurable results, and that’s what they’re looking for now.

The second speaker last night is a fascinating man, named Stephen Kraus, who works for the Harrison Group, a market research firm. He’s a co-author of a new book, entitled The New Elite, Inside the minds of the truly wealthy.

He told us about the many faces of the American rich and the diverse factors that drive this high end customer (like the fact that a large percentage of them shop at Target and love Costco). I’m looking forward to reading his book.

All in all, it was an interesting evening. I met an old friend there from New York: Susan Schein, and there was quite a large crowd of really nice marketers at the event.

Continued…

20. Your best list is your current customer file. Your second best list is probably past customers. They’re your greatest direct marketing assets. Use them! But make sure the files are clean and up-to-date.

21. Direct response lists are always your best bet for outside lists. Someone who’s bought something through the mail is more likely to buy from you … especially if they’re recent buyers.

22. Have you ever tried a compiled list? Of course. Have you ever tried slanting the creative to the compiled list? Probably not. Names on most compiled lists have one thing in common (lawyers, accountants, soccer Moms, etc.). Whatever that one thing is, try reflecting it in your creative.

23. Use a great list broker. Ask for references, and describe your goals, package and target market. These are bright, dedicated people who want to do a great job so you’ll use them again and again.

24. Try to make your direct mail look and sound like it was touched by a human being. Customers and prospects tend to respond better when they feel like they are interacting with a real person.

25. Make sure all of your communications have the same brand personality. [Read more →]

Direct mail has always been the work horse of direct marketers. Over the years, we have mailed all kinds of offers for our clients, from insurance to books, and coins, and stamps, and vitamins and health newsletters, spa visits, and even home cleaning products.

Now, clients are calling us for email marketing programs. I encourage them not to use email for acquisition, only for existing customers or opt-ins.

We’ve done many programs now, and one for a cookie and gift company out of Atlanta. The first few efforts were amazing, as I could see (virtually) how many people were clicking through, and the numbers that were ordering on the spot. And, we could see the spikes in our client’s phone room. We also measured the numbers who were opting out.

It was like a fast-paced, warped speed direct mail program.

Our lists were kept separately and we could instantly see which list was performing the best, an which lists needed more or richer offers.

So, now all of our clients are asking if they can replace direct mail with email efforts. You know the answer, in direct marketing, we always test, test, test. Some offers will always do best in direct mail, especially now when mailboxes are really pretty empty. And, after all, you can’t hold an email catalog in your hand, or read a long offer in email, or see a product in a glamour shot.

What are your thoughts? Let me know.

Days fly by for me, in a frenzy of activities….from direct marketing for our clients, my social media network, my real network of friends, my new books (I’m writing), my columns and all the mundane things I do, like paying bills, returning calls, and handling the challenges of board membership.

In the course of doing all of these activities, I let others slip by. One of those things that I’m always fighting with myself about is Organization. When I was a kid, my mom said I had a disorganized mind and that was why I was so creative. Now, there’s no excuse. [Read more →]

A few years back, I was invited to speak at Vermont/New Hampshire Direct Marketing Days.I wanted to be there but I didn’t want to travel there because the only flight was a toy airplane from LaGuardia.

But Larry Chait, my brilliant friend and mentor, had asked me to come, so I had to say yes and once I did the event’s organizer, Amy Africa, started calling.

She’s more than pleasant but Amy has one of those moose-and-mountain-country voices that suggests she might shoot and skin an unsatisfactory speaker and nail the hide to the barn door.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to Vermont. She sent gifts with notes. Cheese’s note read “All the big cheeses will be here.” On the Maple syrup was “This event will be sweet.”

I steeled myself and got into the little plane. We took off tentatively, cruised at wave height over Long Island Sound and at tree height over Connecticut and Massachusetts, then swooped and dived and yawed and banged and clanged our way into New Hampshire which, from where I sat, looked like Tibet.

Somehow the 15-year old pilot weaved us around mountains and along valleys and, suddenly, there we were. And it was worth it.

The VT/NH Direct Marketing (Circus Circus) event was outstanding: great speakers, circus acts, terrific food, and lots of laughs, all thanks to Amy and her volunteers. They had a raffle kind of draw and I won a rototiller which isn’t much use in a 46th Street apartment so it got “regifted” to a delighted Vermonter.

Amy and I kept in touch for a while; then, as she got more and more important in the Internet world and my agency business started hopping, the letters and emails slowed and we lost touch except for running across each other occasionally at conferences like the DMA’s in New Orleans and Inc. Magazine’s in Scottsdale.

Then Amy saw my face in Fortune Small Business magazine above an article I’d written about the challenges of moving my agency from New York to Florida.

Amy emailed that she was happy to see my smiling (and touched up) face and we started corresponding regularly again and got together in New York last December. At dinner, she asked if I was going to the 2008 DMA Convention in Las Vegas. “No,” I said, “and I’d like to because I’ve never been to Las Vegas.” [Read more →]

Ah, those were the days! One of my first DM jobs was at Greystone Press, a continuity publisher. We sold books in sets, one at a time, and billed customers monthly. Titles included the International Encyclopedia of Art, the International Illustrated Encyclopedia of Decorating. We also had gardening sets (that I wrote), and how-to handbooks.

And every day, the good ol’ USPS delivered mailbags filled with orders and, more important, checks. This was before normal everyday people had credit cards.

Orders and checks actually came right to our office in Manhattan and a bunch of people in the fulfillment area worked quickly to give us flash counts, daily, sometimes hourly.

It was exciting to hear that thousands of orders had come in, with checks, or that there were fewer cancellations than expected.

It was a joy to sit in the back room watching the fulfillment people outserting checks and writing up bank deposit slips. I loved finding out which of my programs was working best and which were lagging.

Now I call clients to ask how a mailing we did is faring out in the market and they often just don’t know yet… and maybe they’ll never know. “The data guy hasn’t put the numbers together, but there seems to be a lift, which may not be because of your mailing because so many responses are unidentifiable .” Which you wouldn’t think possible, would you? [Read more →]

Last week a college friend came up from Atlanta, husband and daughter in tow, for their annual trip to New York.

We went to an off-Broadway musical called Hank Williams: Lost Highway. Hank was a small town Alabama boy who became a great country singer in the late forties and early fifties. He never made it to 30 years old. Hank drank himself to death but not before he gave us Your Cheatin’ Heart, Honky Tonk Blues, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Jambalaya, Hey Good Lookin’, I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You, and dozens more great tunes.

Jason Petty plays Hank in Lost Highway and he is just amazing. To me, Jason and his backup group sound better than the great Hank Williams and I said so to my friend as we were leaving the theater.

“Well, sure”, she said, “But he was imitating”. Hank didn’t imitate. He wrote new music, wrote new lyrics, arranged everything by himself and recorded every song in single takes. He did things nobody else had ever done. He was the first, the original, and everybody after him stands on his shoulders. They write plays about him.

And, of course, she was right.

History is full of people like that. They do things nobody else ever did and then along come the imitators. If they’re talented, the imitators make the original better. Without them, our televisions would still be small, round and in black and white. But the guy who invented that old TV was the genius. The people who came after him were merely clever. Direct Marketing is like that, too. Very few originals, lots of imitators. And the imitators don’t always make the original better.

Part of the problem is that most people think they’re better off being followers. Genuinely original ideas startle them. It’s not that they’re afraid to try something new; they think they don’t have to, so why bother? It’s as if they’ve been eating roast beef and mashed potatoes all their lives and then suddenly someone gives them sushi. They say things like “let’s not re-invent the wheel” and “we’ve always done it this way.” They get into a comfort zone imitating, but not improving.

They like Hank Williams now, but they wouldn’t have liked him back in 1948.

Banks and insurance companies are the worst offenders. They get in comfort zones and they do the same things over and over. You are pre-approved. Low APR. No medical exam required. Look after your loved ones. Safe driver discount. Our strength is our people. But that’s going to change. The Hank Williamses got involved. Whoever’s the Hank Williams over at Aflac gave us the frustrated duck and Geico’s Hank gave us their gecko and suddenly insurance looks different.

When our agency makes a creative presentation, we usually show three concepts: a breakthrough kind of idea which we usually love; a slightly more conservative (imitative) idea but with a little edge to it; and a safe idea which just follows the pack. Nowadays, most clients go with the safe idea.

[Read more →]