CONFERENCE CALL

The DMA has programs to suit every member’s needs In today’s fast-paced environment, it’s hard enough to keep up with your own business, let alone find out what others are doing.

But the Direct Marketing Association is here to help with numerous conferences and seminars designed to meet the varying needs and interests of each segment of its membership.

“We’re trying to make it easier for our members to do business and for them to make money,” says Chris Gallagher, senior vice president of conferences for the DMA.

With that in mind, the DMA holds approximately 20 conferences a year, covering topics of interest for its diverse membership from the fundamentals of database and direct marketing to integrated marketing, developing a successful online/offline media mix.

The DMA’s Annual Fall Conference and Exhibition is the largest, drawing approximately 15,000 direct marketers. Other very popular events are the American Catalog Conference (ACC), the Net.Marketing Conference, the National Conference on Operations and Fulfillment (NCOF) and the National Center for Database Marketing conference (NCDM).

The DMA also has several niche events, like its Nonprofit Conference for nonprofit mailers, and the Direct Marketing to Business Conference (DMB). (The ACC, NCOF, NCDM and DMB events are co-owned with Intertec Publishing, the publisher of DIRECT).

“Everything is membership-driven here,” says Dan Goldstein, the DMA’s director of conference program development. “We want our conferences to service our membership.” The majority of conference attendees are DMA members, while approximately 20%-25% of attendees are non-members.

Conferences are designed according to membership needs and feedback based on two levels of research conducted by DMA event programmers.

A program advisory committee (PAC), consisting of experts in particular segments of the industry, is assembled and consulted prior to developing a program. The second level of information gathering is through research calls to those who have attended past conferences or members who have not attended but fit the profile of those most likely to attend.

Research calls are conducted before and after advisory committee meetings to ensure that the conference direction is meeting the needs of that particular segment. “We call and ask what kind of problems they’re having and what challenges they face,” says Goldstein. “Based on that, we develop the education criteria for the conference.”

EXHIBITS Another important feature of many DMA conferences is the exhibit hall, where attendees can network with their peers while being introduced to new products and services from suppliers.

Conference attendees can get up close and personal with emerging technologies while coming face to face with exhibitors who field questions and demonstrate how their products and services can help businesses.

“In the past few years, we’ve needed to go to more high-tech facilities to accommodate our events,” says Tana Stellato, vice president of conference operations. “There’s been a huge change for us – a lot of e-commerce has been joining us this year, so the trend is to have more e-commerce exhibits.”

FEEDBACK The DMA relies on various types of member/attendee feedback to gauge the success of its conferences.

Session evaluation forms are distributed during the conference to evaluate speakers on their content and presentation skills. And a post-conference survey is distributed to all attendees, requesting their input on the conference and their ideas for future conference topics.

“We also get direct feedback,” says Stellato. “Our president, Bob Wientzen, encourages us to go one-on-one and ask what we can do better with the conference. That’s one of our more valuable ways of gathering that information.”

The newest addition to DMA feedback avenues are on-site phone bank polling areas devised to get on-the-spot comments from participants. “A nice thing about the phone polls is that you can change the questions frequently and results are tabulated for you,” says Gallagher. “Plus you can get the responses the next day and shape the next series of questions that you want.”

Therefore, if you see a group of peers lingering around a phone bank at an upcoming DMA conference, rest assured that they’re not listening to someone at the home office – they’re having their voices heard.

So go ahead and lift the receiver – the DMA wants to hear from you too.