Want to become a leader in online marketing? Then buy a little trade group and issue press releases about “welcome” e-mails.
But whatever you do, do not—and I mean do not—do anything to address the most pressing issues in that industry.
That, folks, is the formula straight from the Direct Marketing Association’s e-mail strategy.
Last July, the DMA bought the startup trade group Email Experience Council to do two things, according to sources: Make money and gain credibility in interactive marketing issues.
Thing is, the DMA has had endless chances in the last 10 years to gain interactive credibility and dropped the ball every … single ... time.
In the latest example, the battle against Utah’s offensively misnamed child-protection do-not-e-mail registry is going down in flames. There may be a final shot at winning, but the DMA is doing nothing about it.
As reported here last week, Jerome Mooney, the lawyer battling Utah’s registry on behalf of the Free Speech Coalition, said that because his client represents a bunch of pornographers, the judge in the case is focusing solely on issues affecting the sex industry.
“We are impacted negatively that it’s the adult industry standing alone,” said Mooney in an interview for last week’s report.
He added that the case is doomed if he can’t get other industries involved.
So I called the DMA to see if maybe now wasn’t the time to get involved in trying to get this piece of idiotic Utah Internet legislation overturned—“idiotic Utah Internet-legislation” being redundant, of course.
Here’s the answer via e-mail from DMA government affairs executive Steven Berry: “DMA will continue to work in enhancing state legislator knowledge about the problems and solutions that do not include creation of lists as Utah has done. They actually increase the risk of the most vulnerable—children—and we will work to oppose such legislation.”
Translation: Yer on yer own in Utah, boys and girls.
One would think the DMA would see Utah’s registry as an opportunity to stand up for interactive marketers and gain some of the much-needed credibility that was lost when the organization took a perfectly respectable online marketing organization, the Association for Interactive Marketing, and systematically disemboweled it.
However, even the slightest show of public support for the pornographers was too much.
The DMA was silent in January 2006 when four other marketing trade groups and two advocacy groups filed an amicus brief with the court supporting the Free Speech Coalition.
DMA president John Greco later said his organization did not sign onto the brief in order to avoid bad press.
Is he kidding? If a trade group won’t stick its neck out for members, who will? What are all those dues for?
Meanwhile, what does the DMA do in relation to e-mail? It issues a press release from the Email Experience Council on a study on the use of “welcome” e-mails among online retailers.
The release was part of an effort to drum up interest for its 2007 Retail Email Welcome Benchmark Study, which requires becoming a paid member of the Email Experience Council to gain access.
This column is in no way meant as criticism of the e-mail professionals who volunteer their time for the Email Experience Council or the council itself. They are working hard to add to the body of knowledge in the e-mail marketing industry.
It is, however, meant to point out a change in DMA culture that sources say has occurred recently.
According to multiple sources, the talk in the halls at DMA headquarters recently has increasingly been whether initiatives are moneymakers or not, as in “oh, that didn’t make money so we don’t do it anymore.”
No one is arguing the DMA shouldn’t be solvent, but it is also an advocacy organization and not every worthwhile advocacy activity has to take place in Washington DC, or be related to postal issues and direct mail. If Utah passed a do-not-mail law, the DMA would be all over it.
Nor should every DMA activity be a moneymaker. Otherwise the group would be a for-profit and wouldn’t have to rely on dues. (Why do I feel I just stated the obvious and shouldn’t have had to?)
The battle in Utah was—and still may be—a perfect opportunity for the DMA to demonstrate it is not just the Direct Mail Association and that it is ready to move into the 21st century as an advocate of its online marketing constituents.
Otherwise Utah’s registry—which requires any marketer sending material in e-mail that is illegal for minors to view or buy to scrub their lists against it—will continue to be a landmine ready to explode on marketers sending messages as innocuous a wine-of-the-month-club newsletters, or even auto ads or cell phone pitches. Minors can’t legally sign contracts, remember?
How about it, DMA? Ready to jump in at the last minute and save e-mail marketing from Utah’s craziness? Think about it. You’ll be heroes, celebrated across the land for having saved e-mail marketing from the lunatics in Utah’s state legislature. (lunatics in Utah’s state legislature being redundant, of course)
Hello? Anybody there?
[Exit to the sound of crickets]
