The Direct Marketing Association has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Universal Postal Union. Under the memorandum’s terms, the two will join to show foreign postal authorities and companies how direct mail and direct marketing as done in the U.S. and how they could begin to adopt American techniques, according to Ramesh Lakshmi-Ratan, DMA executive vice president.
This deal was signed by Edouard Dayan, general director of the UPU and DMA president John Greco and at the Union’s’s high level conference last week in Berne, Switzerland. Both were present at the conference.
This agreement applies to at least 142 of the UPU’s 192 signatory countries which have well-developed postal systems, said Lakshmi-Ratan.
“At a high level, what we did was sign a memorandum of understanding essentially to kind of work together to in a sense develop the global direct marketing community,” Lakshmi-Ratan told Direct Newsline. “Part of the agreement was to take what we’ve been doing in the U.S. as a model.”
He noted that right now, 53% of $174 billion spent on advertising worldwide goes to direct marketing and the remainder is spent on broadcast advertising.
“Part of the agreement is to help enable mainly the postal operators and direct marketers in all these countries to realize the efficiencies and benefits that we’ve been able to realize in the U.S.,” he said.
He pointed to Saudi Arabia as an example of a country that might benefit from this information since 99.5% of its annual $15 billion in advertising expenditures goes to broadcast and only 0.5% to direct mail. “They’re starting to think about how they would grow,” he said.
Under the agreement, the DMA will offer training through seminars and webinars, some of which would be customized.
In addition, the agreement enables both organizations to have closer collaboration in areas such as information exchange, training, research, environmental protection, and funding of UPU-targeted projects, according to the DMA.
