Channel | Direct Marketing | Print

(Direct)Despite declines in recent years, cooperative direct mail can still be a useful medium for direct marketers that want to reach large groups of people at a lower cost than solo mail.

As we look ahead to the 2007 marketing arena--and below are my picks for the 10 trends most worth watching--we should do so with both wonder and cynicism, cheering greatness and booing duplicity.

Businesscoach.com is spending about $4,000 per month on search engine marketing and pay per click advertising on Google and Yahoo, as well as direct response space ads in local area publications in hopes of expanding business.

Husband and wife team Tony Secolo and Kelly Coller operate Office, a hip store in Portland, OR that sells an eclectic mix of office products and art supplies. The couple has branched out, sponsoring an art gallery and an event space. Now, they're moving beyond their local area, into cyberspace with officepdx.com

The marketer with a good mailing list, offer and copy -- and who pays careful attention to how his letter looks -- will have better results than the person who focuses solely on content, with no regard to how it's presented.

Small to mid-sized companies say they prefer to buy communications services from a single provider. However, many find the higher costs and lack of bundled services gives them few options but to go with multiple vendors.

Cingular Wireless filed three lawsuits geared at stopping telemarketers from calling its mobile phone customers, according to a statement from the carrier.

A well-known choral festival is taking a mighty big risk with a new prospecting program: If its current customers raise their voices in protest, the result could shatter glass. In 2007, the choral group will add a third venue, Vancouver, British Columbia, to the two in which it currently hosts weeklong training-and-performance retreats. The group

Problem Solvers' New Look The Fall 2006 catalog from practical home goods marketer Problem Solvers sports a redesigned logo and look, and returns to a vertical, more or less standard-sized mail piece that's closer in size to the one it launched with ...

The U.S. Postal Service is already drawing criticism on its proposed new mailing standards from mailer groups, particularly on the issues of automatable flats.