Best Practices

For local insurance agents, a robust social presence can be a great policy when it comes to generating leads.

In brand advertising, going for the gut yields the gold, according to BrainJuicer’s Orlando Wood. Marketers who tap into the emotional appeal of their ads will also realize quantifiable results — both in terms of viral impact and hard sales metrics such as increased sales and reduced price sensitivity.

Real-time advertising and retargeting online may be working for some, but most marketers with a sustainable growth plan for new customer acquisition still rely on mail to drive web traffic and conversions. If timing is everything, then recency is critical—but it's not that easy to find enough "fresh" names to test. Unfortunately, it still takes a lot of effort to net out an adequate prospect file from the merge-purge of multiple response list hotlines due to the costs and time required to get the job done right.

Hunter Douglas recently launched a new turnkey email program to help resellers promote the manufacturer's window treatments to consumers.

A few years ago, when there were 7 billion credit card solicitations being mailed, one of the core types of lists being used was recent credit card issues.

This week’s question: With today’s younger generation more accustomed to e-mail, mobile, etc. what do you think about the viability of direct mail lists long-term?

Our current panel features Erik Formica of FMI Inc., Jackie Kern of Main Street Direct, Jeff Kobil of LDS Group Inc., Lee Kroll of Kroll Direct Marketing Inc., Chaim Lazar of Net60 Llc, Kraig Prange of Acton International Ltd. and Adrea Rubin of Adrea Rubin Marketing Inc (Would you like to be considered to be a member of our roundtable? Contact Larry Riggs at [email protected].)

Most business-to-consumer direct marketers do their prospect merge/purges at the family level; that is, both the physical location and Surname must be the same for a duplicate situation to exist. This is because the cost-effective strategy for most of them is to send just one piece into a household at a time.

Prior to the mid 1990s the list business was booming. List owners enjoyed a nice stream of list rental income. Brokers and list managers enjoyed their well deserved commissions. That’s no longer the case.

This week, List Talk features Christina Bashark of ePostDirect, who thinks marketers should focus on quality rather than quantity when it comes to building their prospect files. One way to do this is co-registration data