This week’s question for Broker Roundtable: What trends are you seeing in business-to-business? Are B-to-B marketers still mailing heavily, or are more dollars shifting online?
Our current panel features Christopher Pickering of MeritDirect, Stephani Wright of Focus USA, Becky Hagadorn of the Catamount Group, John Ahern of MDx Medical, Lisa Horder of Institute Lists and Kathy Duggan-Josephs of RMI Direct Marketing Inc. (Would you like to be considered to be a member of our roundtable? Contact Larry Riggs at [email protected].)
Christopher Pickering, senior vice president, list brokerage, MeritDirect:
There was a big fight over budget dollars between online and offline within the last seven or eight years. A recent trend is for marketers to evaluate what mix of touches produces the best customers. We have seen that pure search buyers don’t often provide high lifetime value. And postage rates and other costs associated with mailing don’t always make a pure land-mail strategy viable. Being channel-agnostic and looking at long term value, rather than just upfront cost seems to be the best approach.
Stephani Wright, national sales manager, Focus USA:
Business-to-business is an area that Focus has gotten involved in more heavily in the past year or so. From a personal standpoint, we are seeing some major shifts in B-to-B targeting from the postal area into e-mail just as we are seeing with our consumer business. Whereas two years ago, our management team received five to 10 pieces of mail a day, this year this has dropped to one to two pieces a day. Conversely, targeted e-mail messages have grown from one to two a day two years ago to more than 20 a day today. And B-to-B is seeing the same shift as the consumer area to online spending and social media.
Becky Hagadorn, senior account executive, Catamount Group:
The B-to-B clients that I work with are definitely intrigued by interactive marketing. While the online options for spending and targeting in B-to-B have yet to catch up to the business-to-consumer availability, some are still willing to begin testing to gain knowledge in how the interactive arena works. Online advertising should not be ignored—it’s another channel that allows clients risk diversification while increasing exposure.
John Ahern, director of list and data marketing, MDX Medical Inc.:
B-to-B marketers are still mailing, but in nowhere the volume they did in the past. As it becomes even more expensive to continue doing traditional direct mail, and with the opportunities afforded in terms of costs and availability with online advertising, links and banners are exploding. The tradeoff is the response rate. Online response is a fraction of direct mail response, but the cost-per-thousand could be as little as 10% of a traditional postal list. It all comes down to testing, testing, testing.
Lisa Horder, director of list brokerage, Institute Lists:
Multichannel marketing continues to be a growth area. Although clients are still being conservative with their budgets, we’ve seen an increase in the number of mailers willing to get back into renting external lists. In addition, mailers who traditionally sent direct mail are now allocating dollars to test e-mail. We also see more and more requests for customized data for unlimited or multi-use. Mailers are recognizing the need to get creative and do away with the status quo. As list brokers, it’s hard to quantify the online spend, but we know budget dollars are being allocated in that direction. As our industry evolves there will be more interaction with these types of media.
Kathy Duggan-Josephs, vice president of multichannel marketing, RMI Direct Marketing:
While there is a definite shift to more dollars online, it has not replaced mailings. The clutter in the inbox has replaced the clutter in the mailbox, so it pays to be sure that segments of the market get that offline mailing.
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