Q&As

Why are direct marketing firms so often so bad at press relations? No one is saying every DMer must have a PR rep, but if a professional communicator is part of a company’s marketing, is it too much to ask that they be at least competent?

Computer and application developers have long talked about the “grandma test”: If their hardware or programs were intuitive enough for older relatives to use, they knew they had something a broad swath of the everyday online public could find value in.

Upscale health food chain Wild Oats is using dynamic content in its national e-mail newsletter to boost attendance at events in local stores, and the program reportedly is working like gangbusters.

Maura Regan not only knows how to sell Sesame Street, she knows how not to sell it. Regan, Sesame Workshop’s vice president and general manager of global

American Express may be doing a little more entertaining this year. The firm will decide by March whether to expand a pilot program to put upscale lounges

Sure, many of the big players in direct response have embraced database marketing’s best practices. They’re extending analytic capabilities across all mediums and integrating marketing channels into a single file.

But they’d better watch their backs: Small and mid-tier companies

Two of the traditional building blocks of any strong direct response campaign have been the creative and the offer. But in an area where consumers are

In the feature Stay in Touch (Direct, Oct. 1), PTC’s senior director of worldwide channel marketing was incorrectly identified as Greg Norman. Greg James

And now here’s where we make the obligatory joke about selling boldly where no continuity program has sold before The William Shatner Sci-Fi DVD of the

She was born between 1946 and 1964, and her purchases probably have ranged from Hula-Hoops to minivans. She’s the baby boomer woman, and for many marketers