The Direct Marketing Association, New York, Tuesday terminated 14 employees, or 7% of its staff. A total 176 employees remain on board.
Operational changes that allow the organization to run with fewer people, such as outsourcing conference registration and data input functions, combined with a downturn in its seminar business lead to the layoffs, DMA president H. Robert Wientzen said yesterday.
Wientzen said the DMA has hired an outside firm to handle those functions, a project the organization had been working on for about nine months. “We think [outsourcing] will make us more efficient and save us a little bit of money,” he said.
Wientzen said that some sessions have dropped in attendance by as much as 30% to 40% prompting the DMA to cut back on the frequency of its basic seminars like statistics, direct marketing and catalog creative, and cancel others. He said there has also been a slight reduction in conference attendance. “It’s not nearly what we expected and not what other companies are reporting, we’re kind of optimistic about that,” he said.
He cited a cutback in corporate travel as the economy slows as a factor in the drop in attendance. He added that the DMA’s efforts to improve distance learning opportunities such as audio conferencing and Web casting could also affect future attendance.
“None of this is going to impact any member services or any activities we’re expecting to do going forward,” he said.
The last time the DMA cut staff was in 1991 when nine employees were terminated.
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