Editor’s Note: Hey, Direct Marketers…Listen to Your Customers!

DIRECT MARKETING STOLE MY DINING ROOM TABLE. Or about half of it. For the past few months — since May — I’ve had the lazy habit of sorting my mail into magazines, bills to be paid right away … and the rest. And that rest I’ve dumped on the table, intending to sort through it later for anything of interest.

Well, later came this week. And it made me realize that I’m sick and tired of hearing how much more measurable and accountable direct marketing is than “soft” branding campaigns, especially those in the new media channels. DMers often dismiss the relationships that are set up between brands and customers in Twitter or on Facebook and ask knowingly what the ROI value of a follower is.

What’s the value to marketers of these communications, culled from the slag heap of paper unloaded onto my dining table in the last three months?

• Fourteen catalogs from 12 online home décor merchants, mailed to me after I bought one item a year ago and obviously neglected to uncheck a box that signed me up for other messages. I’ll never buy from these merchants and, frankly, I know who that first seller is and will never buy from them again either.
• Thirty-six notices of various types and sizes from my bank, advising me of the coming change in debit card rules. I’m supposed to go sign up for their overdraft protection. I don’t want it, and I could have told them that 35 messages ago.
• Fifty-five offers for new credit cards. Guys, it’s the new frugality. Get real.
• A pile too numerous to count of magazine subscription reactivations. I’m inclined to give these a collegial pass, except that in almost all cases, I merely switched to subscribe to their digital editions. Don’t the online and print lists ever talk?

I’m sure all these marketers measure response to their mailings and can tell you how much they spend to acquire a customer. But that slides over the calculation that it’s cheaper, and in list terms, more lucrative to keep me, a non-respondent, on their lists rather than strike me off. They can track and find out that I’ve not responded to one of these solicitations. But the economics of push messaging work for marketers because blasting out mailings, paper or digital, is relatively cheap, so misfires don’t hurt.

The measurement is all centered on benefits to the marketer. The customer doesn’t figure into it at all.

So I’ve had enough talk about the accountability that direct marketing brings to the table. On my table, it’s apparently whatever they can cram into the channel without too much cost.