Bridging the Divide

Despite all the technological advances in recent years, the basic needs of business-to-business direct marketers haven’t really changed all that much. B-to-B pros are still looking for better ways to generate new, hot prospects; keep their data fresh and accurate; and get the sales and marketing departments to play nice together.

Of course, there are new issues to contend with as well, like privacy in a digital age where information flows freely across the globe and — especially in the high-tech sector — an ever-increasing number of channel partners. Direct gathered a group of B-to-B marketers and consultants in New York for our first annual B-to-B roundtable to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing their field.

Data in general was a particularly vexing issue for the panelists. “The corollary question that affects B-to-B marketers is who should be responsible for collecting that data,” notes consultant Ruth Stevens, who moderated the roundtable. “It’s the sales force or the resellers or the customer facing sales teams that have the day-to-day direct access. But the marketers may be uncomfortable, or there may be issues about asking the salespeople to be responsible for data collection.”

“That’s an age-old problem,” says Michael Veit, direct/database marketing manager at RSA Security. “Are [salespeople] really going to want to hand over their contact information to the company? Probably not, in a lot of cases.”

Participants:

• Ruth P. Stevens, president, eMarketing Strategy (moderator)

• Cyndi Greenglass, president, agency services, Diamond Marketing Solutions

• Theresa C. Kushner, director, market data and analytics, IBM

• M.H. “Mac” McIntosh, president, Mac McIntosh Inc.

• Michael Veit, direct/database marketing manager, RSA Security Inc.

STEVENS: Where do you see direct marketing adding the most value, either in your own company or in the companies you observe?

MCINTOSH: Database-driven direct marketing for lead generation is a huge tactic, as well as things like search engine optimization and pay per click. The lead development is often keeping in touch with prospects as they move through their buying or consideration process, to nurture them, to identify which [of them] are ripe and ready. A few of my clients are multichannel and also sell direct through catalogs or the Web, as well as having field sales forces and distributors or resellers or dealers, so direct marketing may play in some channels but not in others.

VEIT: We’re using it mostly for delivering qualified leads to the sales group. I think there’s a secondary benefit that comes along with those activities, which is developing thought leadership, mind share and general awareness.

GREENGLASS: Over the past several years we’ve seen a lot of companies looking [at both] maximizing profitability and the customer experience and using direct to create custom communications and a dialogue [based on] what you know about the customer, the contact, their level, function, needs. Direct gives you that tremendous opportunity to create a dialogue in the absence of a salesperson, and create ongoing communication in between the sales process.

KUSHNER: At IBM, we changed the name of direct marketing to demand generation. We figured it would cover a whole wealth of ills and good things as well. So we consider anything that generates demand — and demand being a lead — a part of that. [There’s] a lot of targeting going on. We’re looking at how we can use that demand-generation kind of engine to carry on a dialogue in conjunction with the dialogue the salesperson is having. A real conversation back and forth instead of a one-way discourse. In our case, there’s a lot of internal activity designed to keep the 20% of everybody’s customer base that generates 80% of everybody’s revenue. But at the same time, there’s movement into areas like line of business, where from an IT technology perspective we haven’t been playing as well as we should.

STEVENS: Direct marketing in B-to-B has always had one foot in marketing and one foot in sales. We get deeply involved in issues about supporting the sales function through all channels — business partners, e-commerce, telephone, retail. How do we manage conflicting channels when all of them are competing for business and we’re trying to serve our customers the best way we can?

KUSHNER: We’ve got channels for everything, and lots of people in every one of those channels. Conflict is going to be inevitable. We’re trying to take it from the customer’s perspective. Where does the customer want to deal with us? So it’s no longer us developing the channels and saying, ‘Since you’re that kind of customer, that’s the kind of channel we’re going to direct to you.’ It’s more making our channels available and accessible. Depending upon the product, how do they want to buy it? [If] it’s a service, do they want someone to call on them? That choice becomes theirs. I think my favorite quote from Lou Gerstner, who used to run [IBM], is ‘Everything about marketing gets very easy when you think about the customer and work back into the company, rather than taking the company’s view and working out.’

GREENGLASS: Offering templated marketing programs that allow customer customization, and then giving that facility to your channel partners where you have consistency of brand and messaging. And the flexibility of then determining who the customers are, who the prospects are, how to communicate and how often a number of things are done. It levels the playing field in the channel. So you can have channel partners who are very knowledgeable and those that are mom-and-pop, one-man, one-woman shows.

STEVENS: And, of course, all those wonderful applications depend on having strong, clean, accurate and high-performing databases. B-to-B data degrades as rapidly as 3% to 4% a month. Salespeople are often loath to provide marketing with information about customers. What are you seeing on the data collection and maintenance front?

VEIT: It’s a huge challenge. [Our] database probably degraded at least to that rate and it likely was a lot more than that about two years ago when technology had a downturn. Our strategy for the most part was to give customers and prospects as many opportunities as possible along the way to update their information. And, of course, the most efficient way to do that nowadays is electronically [online]. In fact, we’re building something right now that allows them to edit their contact information directly in our [sales force automation] system.

MCINTOSH: I’m stunned by how many business-to-business marketers don’t use the available third-party sources for data appending, certification [and] adding contacts. That’s a resource B-to-B marketers don’t seem to do a whole lot with in my experience.

GREENGLASS: You know, I think using your standardization and hygiene techniques is pretty straightforward and easy on a site or enterprise level. Where it becomes tough is on a content level. The churn with people moving so much within organizations or leaving organizations is so hard to keep up with, and I have not found a consistent source that you could use for an append or a match that would allow you to keep up to date on contacts.

MCINTOSH: That really makes sense sometimes, too — start there and build, and then try to get [data] from interaction with the customers. For example, I see people doing telemarketing as a direct marketing technique, and the first call is, ‘Who’s the person in charge of this?’ That’s a ridiculous place to start. They could have saved a whole call by [having a name]. Even if that person is gone, they could say, ‘Well, who replaced them?’ Then they’re already in. They’re not trying to navigate past the receptionist. The same thing with direct mail, even if it’s sometimes going to the wrong target. In B-to-B there’s still somebody at that desk getting mail and it can often give them the opportunity to get an update. For example, for my own newsletter mailing list, about 30% of my subscribers turn over every year. But frequently I get the new name because I mail to the old title and somebody crosses out their name and says, ‘Add me with the same title,’ so I know that it’s a replacement person.

STEVENS: The corollary question that affects B-to-B marketers is who should be responsible for collecting that data. It’s the sales force or the resellers or the customer facing sales teams that have the day-to-day direct access, but the marketers may be uncomfortable, or there may be issues about asking the salespeople to be responsible for data collection.

KUSHNER: We’ve just [completed] the largest installation of Siebel in the world, and that’s been a challenge for us. We believe the real value that lies in Siebel is for the sales rep to be able to talk to marketing. And it truly does have that ability. One of our first things to try was to get something as simple as a competitive script, because in Siebel you can set up SQL scripts that allow you to collect data. So we thought if we could create a script that would show the sales reps all the competitive installations in his account that we collected and pushed to him, it would show him that marketing had some value in his side of the house. But it’s a real back-and-forth. And with the thousands of sales reps we have, that’s going to be a very big challenge for us, trying to get them to open up their desk drawers and pull out their notebooks and give us the 20 guys who are the heads of the companies they deal with. It’s not easy, and with Lotus Notes, they all have their own databases. Putting it in Siebel and teaching them to manage against it…it ultimately will be an incredible productivity enhancement for both sales and marketing. But I think it muddies the line between sales and marketing even more, and I’m not sure marketing is prepared for that.

VEIT: What we’re starting to talk about is some kind of cross-functional group with representatives from each of the different departments that own that [data] function. It’s obviously critical.

STEVENS: Are you asking salespeople to update the database as they learn new contacts?

VEIT: Oh, of course. You’re always going to — that’s an age-old problem. Are they really going to want to hand over their contact information to the company? Probably not, in a lot of cases. So how do you force that? I’m not sure you can. So the question becomes, what incentives can you give to [get them] to do it?

KUSHNER: One of the new things we’ve [created] is a high-relationship contact program. Basically what we’ve said is that if you put your highest relationship contacts into Siebel, we will take especially good care of making sure that data is always accurate. If we start to change something with a mass update, we’ll notify you first and you’ll have the right to refuse. I think that’s moving also to where if they’ve identified their highest relationship contacts, we’re going to start to work on what marketing can do to help support them instead of getting in their face all the time. It’s really been interesting.

MCINTOSH: The companies I’ve seen have success are doing what you’re talking about. They’re asking salespeople for [data], but they’re also [giving them incentives], not necessarily cash and money, but in what it’s going to do for you. It’s also an education process, because they see it as more paperwork or more non-selling work. So if they can see that it translates back to better leads or whatever, then they’re more willing to participate. And sometimes the icing on the cake is for every name you [input], you get entered into a drawing for a week at a spa or something. Some extra incentive to take time out of what they consider their personal time.

GREENGLASS: I think the challenge too is that if you ever watch high-powered salespeople, no two think alike. They have their own way of doing it. Some have a three-ring notebook, some use a Palm, some have a system, some are very intuitive. The hard challenge for us is we have IT that wants to map a process that’s consistent for everybody. You have marketers who want to see information in a consistent format so that we can trend it and analyze it and use it and then you have salespeople where every single one of them is different. I think some of the push-back comes from the fact that we’re not watching [salespeople] and creating something that works for them. We’re telling them to change to accommodate us.

MCINTOSH: Do you at IBM find that you have to get really, really senior management to say, ‘This is the way it’s going to be’? Sales management has to believe in this, otherwise they’ll say, ‘Oh, don’t worry. Don’t worry about those folks in marketing. Just go out and sell more.’

KUSHNER: Actually, yesterday I had a discussion with the general manager of small and medium-sized business about that very topic. He’s decided he wants to be the champion for that — that it’s going to take him to do it. It’s taking him sitting around the desk with the other guys saying, ‘I need it.’

VEIT: [Whether] they like our marketing programs and [whether] their contacts will like them is one of the best incentives you can give salespeople to keep the information updated. [Let them know their] contacts aren’t going to be involved in our marketing programs if [they] don’t get into our centralized system.

MCINTOSH: So if they believe in your program, they want to get their contacts in.

VEIT: Exactly.

STEVENS: Very few B-to-B marketers actually put their own names on the list rental market, other than seminar organizers or some catalogers. Does your company or your clients’ companies make their house file available for rent? What are some of the pros and cons business marketers need to consider?

GREENGLASS: You know, I have approached clients often with this and asked them if they would consider it. I’d say there’s maybe two major reasons I get pushed back. One is I think a lack of familiarity with the process in B-to-B, unlike in consumer marketing. And there’s so much difficulty keeping the information up to date. [Also, many are concerned if] their data is good enough to meet the requirements of the list manager to rent it, and the rigors of the rental market.

STEVENS: Would you ever consider renting your files?

VEIT: I’d say absolutely not, because our internal database of customers and prospects is the engine that drives the business. It’s so valuable and we get so much use out of that I don’t think anyone would consider letting anyone else use that.

MCINTOSH: There’s also privacy issues. If you’re a multinational company, there’s huge things with safe harbor in Europe. I don’t rent my own personal list, and most of my clients don’t. There are exceptions — publishing companies do frequently. But they wouldn’t necessarily rent it to a competitor. I think that’s one of the reasons people who don’t understand the process are hesitant, because they think, ‘Well, what if one of my competitors wants it?’ They don’t understand that can be controlled to a large degree.

KUSHNER: In today’s world identifying competitors is a challenge. You’ve got alliances, you’ve got competition, you’ve got everything. We ran across this issue in sharing [data] with our business partners. We [wanted to help them to] be more successful with what we knew about our customers. But we had some internal conflict about what it would be like to share this information and why was it so testy. We found that if I have a contact and Mac is my contact, [he’s] mine. He as an individual is mine. The company he works for is a different [thing]. If you worked for GE or some other large company, that company is pretty much up for grabs. But you and what you do — especially if I have an opportunity with you — that’s mine. So what we said was, OK, then let’s take the contacts out of the picture with our partners. Let’s tell them which companies we have arrangements with and what’s installed at those companies and what kinds of activity have been going on with those companies, but take the contact [names] out. That seemed to satisfy everything on our side and the partners said, ‘Oh, I can deal with that. Because now I can take that name for GE and go find out what I want to sell into GE.’ So far that’s working.

MCINTOSH: But that’s a hot issue, because, for example, [some] software companies can’t give their list to their reseller partners because they haven’t expressly gotten permission to do it. So they’re going back and revamping all their programs to be able to ask for that permission up front so that they can pass it over without being the target of a lawsuit.

KUSHNER: There are thousands of privacy people inside IBM whose job it is to watch out for what we do with data once we get it in house. A lot of times those laws tend to apply division to division, [like] we’re separate companies or something. We need to try to figure out how to manage it. [The regulations] in Italy hit us. We had all of a sudden to regroup and figure out what we were going to do in Italy when all their new security laws came out.

STEVENS: The DMA actually is starting to make some noise about developing a point of view on B-to-B privacy and exploring what privacy practices make sense for business-to-business marketers. What position does your company take on customer information front?

VEIT: We don’t share information with any other company, even if they are a close partner. We’re a network security company, so we have to be especially careful about that sort of thing.

STEVENS: I think there’s confusion out in the world between privacy and security. Sometimes when people are talking about privacy they mean security. But the thing that particularly vexes us direct marketers is the question of opt-in vs. opt-out. [If] I’ve met somebody at a trade show and picked up his business card, does that give me permission to follow up with a business letter in the postal mail? Well, all of us would have said, ‘Yes, I met the guy, I got his card, so I’m going to continue that dialogue through the mail.’ But then when it comes to e-mail, do I have the same permission? Many of us would say, ‘Yes, it’s on his business card, and he gave me the card, I want to continue the conversation…so yes, I may send him an e-mail.’ And that’s when things start to get questionable.

VEIT: I think in that case, if they provide with you with contact information at an event, that’s kind of an implicit opt-in to communication. You obviously give people every opportunity to opt out and make that very easy, a best practice.

KUSHNER: That’s particularly perplexing for us because I can give you my contact card at a software show but the minute it gets into IBM’s system, our opt-in policy says you opt in for everything that IBM sells. That’s sort of a problem, because the dialogue you and I had was about software, and I’m not interested in buying a mainframe. Now all of a sudden, I have a situation.

MCINTOSH: I belong to a lot of frequent flyer clubs. Some of them, when you opt in to getting your statements online, [they send] you everything — and you don’t want everything. You get all the hotel offers, because you’re fair game. Others say, ‘Tell us the level of what you [want’. Do you want just our stuff, our partners’ stuff, just the statements?’ Those I’ve continued to allow. But on the ones where I started to get daily things on specials to Bermuda that had nothing to do with [what I wanted], I opted back out. It was like I said, ‘I’m a target, go ahead and shoot.’

GREENGLASS: I think there will be an ongoing push to have some level of self-regulation in the workplace that says there’s no reason we have rights as consumers, but when we go into our offices suddenly all bets are off and we can do whatever we want. [With] multilevel [businesses like] the airlines, it’s a challenge. You have contacts, you have divisions, you have sites, you have enterprises — where does your privacy reside, where does your opt-in reside? You have to use logic that says, ‘I have to ask you to opt into every relationship.’ It’s very difficult.

STEVENS: Most of us are using multiple media channels. We’re using e-mail, [postal] mail, phone, Web sites, we’re using search engine marketing, the whole gamut. Have you developed any insights into the perfect multichannel sequence of messaging?

GREENGLASS: The silver bullet? (Laughter.)

VEIT: Different people pay attention to different kinds of media. Some are going to use e-mail more than direct mail, some are going to be more focused on hard copy. Different media adds dimension to your presence. There’s a multiplier effect in terms of the awareness you’re generating.

GREENGLASS: During difficult times [some clients] pulled back on trade publication advertising and said direct mail and e-mail are going to be the workhorses, they’re going to carry the entire promotion on their backs. And we’ve seen that’s really, really tough. You do see the negative impact, the drop. It’s almost implicit then that if you layer it back on, your direct mail and your e-mail has the lift. But to what extent do you get that lift? You see it if you were unfortunate enough to have your publication advertising taken away. You end up spending the same money.

MCINTOSH: I’ve seen that with trade shows too. They cut back too severely on their trade show presence because it’s expensive, and travel and security issues have caused less attendance. And then suddenly they’re getting fewer leads in the pipeline, because [they’re losing] the chance [to meet] the customer who has been getting the mailings but may not have responded.

GREENGLASS: [It’s like when] we talk about the science of a basic direct mail piece. Everything in the envelope serves a purpose. If you take something out of the envelope, what’s the effect? So everything in your media mix should serve a purpose. If you take something away, does it have a negative impact overall? You have to be very, very careful that you don’t just start cutting things from the media mix without understanding the implication.

VEIT: Print advertising is kind of like air coverage to soften up the landscape, and the ground operations are things like direct mail and telemarketing.

MCINTOSH: Print advertising also can be a direct medium. With [some] companies I’m interacting with, they have a brand department and they have a lead-generation department. The brand ads would just take two lines at the end [to become lead-generation ads]. Instead of just having a Web address, have a reason to go [to that site]. They say, ‘No this is just supposed to be branding.’ But you just spent a million dollars on that campaign. Why not add a little component and get a few thousand leads for free?

GREENGLASS: Regardless of the sequence [of contact], conditioning the lead or the customer by mail, online, offline — whatever — prior to a sales contact is very effective. When the salesperson makes that contact, they are more likely to advance the sales process. Subsequently, there is a marketing communication that goes back to that contact after the sales call, because generally speaking, salespeople are specialists. They come in and they have the contact, then walk away until their prospect or customer is conditioned to move to the next step. Then they jump in again, and they leave, and they jump in again. Having that marketing conditioning along the way is the most effective [thing] we’ve seen. How you do that depends on your product and customer requirements.

KUSHNER: When we’ve got a lot of leads in the pipeline and we grade them by [whether] they’re really, really hot or they’re not so hot, we find the sales reps do exactly what sales reps always do. They go to the ones that are going to close tomorrow, that have purchase orders attached to them. (Laughter.) And what they leave on the plate are the other ones that are sort of lukewarm. They’ve already accepted them and they want to hold on to them. [But] they just don’t have the time.

MCINTOSH: Direct marketers or marketers in general would say, ‘OK, we’ve done our job.’ But all we did was plant the seedling, and nobody is watering, weeding and feeding. And the salespeople are paid to pick the fruit. They’re not going to water and weed, they see that as a waste of time. And if they’re not picking fruit they’re fired or don’t make their commission or bonus.

KUSHNER: What we’ve done is exactly that, put them back into a special program to sort of nurture them through so they can have the purchase orders.

STEVENS: What tactics do you use?

KUSHNER: We use a lot of e-mail. If we have permission to talk to them that’s the best way.

MCINTOSH: I have big issues [about] e-mail at the moment. Permission is great, but you’re still not getting through corporate firewalls and desktop spam filtering. So if you’re looking at e-newsletters people subscribe to, [many aren’t] getting through. For example, a year ago, one I know of was getting 87% clickthrough to at least one article. It’s down to 37%. It used to be opened by 95%. Now it’s being opened by 50%. This particular business-to-business publisher said to me that when somebody signed up, half of the instant confirmations are bouncing [because] they’re not getting past the firewalls. E-mail is a good tactic, but I think the pendulum is swinging. We need to start supplementing with direct mail and phone and other things.

KUSHNER: We use a lot of telephone tactics, too, but that gets very wearing after a while. And it’s expensive.

MCINTOSH: If you call every day, that’s even more intrusive.

KUSHNER: Right. There’s Seth Godin’s new book, “Free Prize Inside.” One of the things [about it] I think is pretty intriguing is that you have to create remarkable products and remarkable marketing. Remarkable means that I will remark about it, that I will tell somebody about it. One of the things we’re seeing is a whole lot more of a viral intent for the messages we send out to make sure someone will remark to someone [else] that they’ve seen it or pass it on.

STEVENS: In B-to-B, a lot of offer testing has been done over the years. What are you seeing that’s working out there for you?

KUSHNER: It’s not [to] have a salesman call me. (Laughter.)

MCINTOSH: I’m seeing two trends. One is having multiple offers that are related but apply to people at different stages of the buying cycle. It’s kind of like a dating analogy — you don’t ask somebody to marry you on the first date. But if you’ve been dating a while, then having a salesman call might be appropriate. But you don’t necessarily know where they are at a given time. So how about something easy, like a white paper. And then how about something medium, like attending a Webinar, which takes an hour of their time, or how about a free analysis of your computer security needs or whatever. Have three, so you get a much greater chance of response depending on where they are. And the other one that’s working is really educational offers, [helping customers] do their jobs better, make better decisions. They expect to some degree it might be slightly biased, but they still want that framework. If I’m going to buy software, what should I be looking for? What’s important? If you can package that information as [useful for] helping [customers] make better decisions, you get to come along for the ride.

VEIT: We focus mostly on educational-type offers, we’re very soft-sell. Our particular type of product, we’re not going to sell off of an e-mail or a direct mail piece. There are tens of thousands of dollars [at stake, a] long sales cycle, infrastructure, large decision-making units. We’re using things like white-paper offers for lead generation, focusing on hot topics like compliance.

KUSHNER: Anything that helps people with decision-making seems to be good, because they don’t have time to go out and become an expert on something.

MCINTOSH: The free PDA stuff — a lot of people are doing offers like, ‘Inquire and we’ll send you this gift.’ I think if you’re really targeting and you’re trying to reach the company CEOs, those things can be fine. But in general direct marketing it seems to be the education, the how-tos, the comparisons, that kind of stuff.

VEIT: The other thing it does is it [can] help establish you as an expert on a particular topic.

STEVENS: Telemarketing has come up as a nurturing and acquisition tactic. Where are you applying the phone in the sales and marketing process? Where is it working?

GREENGLASS: This is a tough one. I have seen a pulling back on phone use because of the difficulty of reaching people [and the] cost associated with telemarketing, especially if you’re using third parties. So I’ve seen it used less and less from an acquisition standpoint and more and more in the customer relationship areas where you’re doing upselling, cross selling and retention.

KUSHNER: Are you seeing a lot of people doing acquisition?

MCINTOSH: Sales will say they’re not getting enough leads from marketing, and they’ll fund a telemarketing company to cold-call 5,000 companies. It’s kind of a sledgehammer expensive approach. But what’s also interesting about telemarketing in business-to-business specifically is that we take a low-paid, poorly trained person and want them to make peer-level calls to senior executives. That doesn’t work. It’s not a mass media, it’s a one-to-one media.

KUSHNER: One of the most successful tactics that we have at IBM right now is something we call ‘reason of call.’ When we have [something] brand-new coming out or when we have something we think would be of importance to a particular targeted audience, we create a script. That’s getting a lot more power and traction inside. Now once you get about 15 of those ‘reasons of call,’ you have to figure out who’s going to do what.

MCINTOSH: Because of the do-not-call list, I think a lot of telemarketing companies that were doing B-to-C have jumped into B-to-B, and they’re taking that same scripted minimum-wage approach. It just doesn’t work, so it’s actually polluting [the environment] even more. I understand they want to survive and prosper and they see B-to-B as a way to do that, but you can’t apply the same techniques. It doesn’t scale. You can call a million homeowners and try to sell them a subscription to the L.A. Times, but you can’t do that in B-to-B.

STEVENS: Where is business-to-business direct marketing going in the future?

VEIT: I don’t think this is going to be news to anyone, but it’s getting to where you have to be more and more accountable. You have to structure the programs and the lead-management process so you’re able to demonstrate the value of the programs. I think that’s just getting more so. We’ve found that pretty challenging for high-ticket products, where it takes multiple touches to get someone to buy. How do you get an ROI figure there? We’re struggling with that. I hope we can get there.

GREENGLASS: I think we all recognize that databases are a corporate asset, and the lifeblood of the business for sales and marketing. The investment in that area will continue to grow. And [we need to] figure out the multichannel approach. We have to be where our customers want us to be when they want to buy.

MCINTOSH: I think direct marketing is, [in effect,] becoming [mainstream] marketing because of that drive for accountability, CEOs saying they’re not going to shoot gerbils through cannons anymore like they did during the dot-com era. I think like you said, Theresa, it’s demand generation now, or it’s customer acquisition, [but] it’s not direct marketing — that department doesn’t exist in B-to-B. I also think there have been some shifts in direct marketing tactics. Some print trade advertising has shifted to online. A lot of print direct mail shifted to e-mail and has shifted back. Trade shows were a huge chunk of the budget, but the pie has [gotten smaller] and those dollars have [moved] online. I think there’s a pendulum effect where things swing back.

GREENGLASS: What do you think about TV? Have any of you seen those Xerox commercials on the Olympics about their color print-on-demand? They actually say ‘40% increase on response.’ It’s a response ad, it’s a B-to-B ad, it’s prime-time Olympic coverage. That’s big bucks.

KUSHNER: I wonder what their return is?

MCINTOSH: An advertising print salesperson I know was saying that one of the problems with a lot of the major hardware and software companies is that they’re shifting a lot of dollars to TV and using it as a mass-market media rather than [advertising in] trade publications. But I think that will swing back too, because if they really measure it, will they see the impact they were hoping for? A lot of marketing is done to make the CEO happy and the board of directors happy.

KUSHNER: I’ve always believed that direct marketing is nothing more than good marketing to begin with. But what I see, at least in our area, is a bigger trend toward making marketing science. In other words, applying all the good things that direct marketing has about measurements and accountability to the entire spectrum of marketing. What we’re seeing is a crossover from the database marketing world into the marketing research world. When someone tells you something and you do market research and they say, ‘I’m going to buy this,’ do they ever really do it? Is there a connection? And how are you mining both those kinds of data so you’re really having a convergence of all the marketing disciplines? That’s what direct marketing has always done.