IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DMA president John Greco's coming-out party. The DMA05 conference in Atlanta was the first fall show that was truly his after having been at the helm the entire preceding year.
Members of the trade press arrived at Greco's press conference the evening of Oct. 17 — his first in months — curious to see how the new president would conduct himself and what he would say about the DMA's plans for the rest of the decade.
But what they got, except for a few tense moments, was little more than what he said during his keynote speech earlier that morning. It was long on lofty ideals and short on specifics, and he whisked out 20 minutes after he whisked in.
When asked what the attendance figures were for DMA05, Greco said he had already given the figure during his speech: “More than 10,000 people.”
However, more than 10,000 have attended every recent fall conference, except possibly the one in Chicago just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Lately the DMA has stopped releasing the number of attendees and exhibitors at the show and has refused to explain why.
Exhibitors like to know the number so they can gauge how a particular conference stacks up against other events.
“We are releasing figures that reflect the honesty about what's here in terms of the approximate size of the audience,” Greco said. “I think the mistake we would make if we tried to be more precise on every conference would be dealing with issues of mix.”
He added: “We're very pleased with the turnout, and we are taking another step in the direction of releasing the kind of information that you have been asking for by stating that it is over 10,000. And I think…I know that we'll be doing that at every conference in terms of giving you at least a baseline for what's there.”
Meanwhile, Greco reiterated that the DMA voted to require members to adopt e-mail authentication systems. Those who don't risk losing their memberships, he said.
This month MSN and Hotmail will begin flagging as potential spam incoming messages for which its servers can't verify senders' return address information. As a result, any unauthenticated e-mail, even customer service messages, may start ending up in receivers' junk mail folders.
Some industry leaders fear that too many companies will fail to see the benefits of authenticating their messages and jeopardize the industry's attempt to fight spam and phishing.
These problems are costing ISPs ever more money to fight, so mailbox providers are pressuring e-mail senders to use e-mail authentication.
The DMA did not set the requirement at the ISPs' request, Greco said.
He also said member companies have 60 to 90 days to begin authenticating outbound e-mail. “It is a relatively straightforward, easy process,” he said.
The DMA does not endorse any particular type of authentication, he added.
Greco began the briefing by assuring the trade reporters and editors in the room that the DMA's inMarketing magazine is not meant to compete with any of them.
“It is absolutely not our intention at all to detract from the existing publications or position inMarketing against them in any way,” he said. “The publication is intended as a better alternative to the various written publications that we have been using.”
Direct marketing trade publishers have been complaining since inMarketing was announced that the DMA was competing with its trade press members by selling ads.
When asked if the magazine was profitable, Greco said: “We are investing in this. This is a member communications vehicle. We are offsetting some of our costs with it. It is an investment that is collapsing many of the other vehicles that we've used in the past, each of which were invested in by us, and we've had some advertising revenue in them already so we're really just shifting those dollars around within the mix.”
He added: “I do not look at this as a profit center. I look at it as a member communications vehicle that in the best interest of our members, we should subsidize to the best degree possible so that we don't need to raise members' dues.”
When pressed on whether or not inMarketing is profitable, Greco said tersely, “I'm not sure that's a question we really should be dealing with here. Are we going to have an editorial discussion or a business meeting discussion here? I'm not sure where we're going with this. I've made my statement.”
