Q&As

Last month, The New York Times ran a list of 2006’s top ideas, one of which had interesting direct marketing ramifications: television commercials that hide special offers by making them viewable only through freeze-frame technology. The “top idea” here was marketers’ attempts to dissuade consumers from using digital video recorders, such as TiVo, to fast-forward through commercials.

Collette Vacations had a powerful marketing tool at its fingertips: A database of customer satisfaction survey responses, which also held information

AAA Insider, one of AAA Southern New England’s newest member programs, is also one of its most effective. A year in, free-to-paid memberships are converting at nearly 95%, compared with the club’s general renewal rate of around 89%.

Everyone has their favorite haunts on the Web. Some are places that you pop into every now and then, to make a quick purchase or check up on news. Others

RSS may stand for Really Simple Syndication (among other less-descriptive things), but there’s nothing simple about selling the automated Web feed processes

It would seem most marketers are aware that the World Trade Center towers are no longer standing. Not true, according to the U.S. Postal Service. The

Get ready. The current postal rate case is all about shape. And mailers are going to find out that one size does not fit all. For starters, flat mail

Marketing databases are overflowing with information — they can hold millions of records and thousands of data points on prospects and customers. The ready availability of data has fueled a tendency to analyze things to death; everyone wants to know something slightly different. An inexperienced analyst can end up fulfilling 101 analytical requests, when probably only 10 or so relate to actual success.

Thank you, Steve Jobs and the iTunes Music Store, for a jump in podcast downloads. The Pew Internet & American Life Project discovered in a recent poll

Business-to-business marketing may not have the glamorous reputation of its consumer cousin. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of hot new ideas to help B-to-B companies better acquire and retain customers. Here’s a roundup of new developments to help you meet your business objectives.