January 2007
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DIRECT Newsline
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| AAA Targets Teens |
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...
By Richard H. Levey |
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| Custom ‘Wild Mail’ Drives Store Traffic |
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...
By Ken Magill |
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| David Takes on the Goliaths |
Retailer Dave's Soda and Pet City made its first move into the multichannel world last month with an e-commerce site to promote the national launch of...
By Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| Fruit of Its Labor |
Despite an ever-growing Web and retail presence, print catalogs remain an essential part of Harry & David's marketing mix. “The catalog is the...
By Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| GETTING THROUGH |
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...
By Ruth P. Stevens |
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| Gold Standard |
Sure, many people maintain that the older you get, the better you get. But that doesn't mean a makeover wouldn't hurt. Godiva Chocolatier did just that...
By Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| Hospital Scores With New Mail Package |
Sometimes it pays to take a risk. The San Antonio Hospital Foundation of Upland, CA sent out a 5,000-piece mailing last November to solicit donations...
By Larry Riggs |
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| ID, Please |
Collette Vacations had a powerful marketing tool at its fingertips: A database of customer satisfaction survey responses, which also held information...
By Richard H. Levey |
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| Ready for Syndication Soon? |
RSS may stand for “Really Simple Syndication” (among other less-descriptive things), but there's nothing simple about selling the automated...
By Brian Quinton |
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| Vacation Planning |
Long before travelers pull their suitcases down from the top shelf, RCI Global Vacation Network has begun modeling where they will go. Not on an individual...
By Richard H. Levey |
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Features
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| Listline |
NEW LISTS GlobalSpec More than 1.5 million individuals registered to use GlobalSpec's search services are identified on the Engineering, Technical and...
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Op-Ed Columns
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| Need an Endorsement? Ask Henry VIII's Agent |
Celebrity endorsements ain't what they used to be. If you're old enough you remember when Arthur Godfrey and Dinah Shore could endorse almost anything,...
HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS |
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| What's This? |
We've mentioned it already. But it may still be a shock when this issue of Direct arrives in your mailbox. It has the same writers as it did before —...
RAY SCHULTZ |
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General
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| …And the Mail Just Keeps Coming |
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...
Patricia Odell |
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| Becoming a Pod Person |
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...
Brian Quinton |
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| CORRECTION |
In the feature “Stay in Touch” (Direct, Oct. 1), PTC's senior director of worldwide channel marketing was incorrectly identified as Greg...
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| Hey, Lady! |
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...
Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| Let's Make a Deal |
Grizzard Performance Group posed this question in a recent survey: You're planning on purchasing a large item, like a TV. After much research, you decide...
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| Letters to the Editor |
FAIR IS FOUL I have a bone to pick with Richard Levey and his Yankees column (Loose Cannon, November). A couple of times in the piece he talks about...
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| Look Back in Hunger |
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...
RICHARD H. LEVEY |
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| Low Tech's the Ticket |
For all the millions spent on television advertisements last holiday season, comparatively low-tech channels proved most effective in persuading shoppers...
Richard H. Levey |
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| Making Measurement Matter |
The rest of the world finally appears to have caught up with direct marketers' focus on accountability. Marketing databases are overflowing with information...
By Jatinder Singh |
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| One Size Does Not Fit Everyone |
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...
By Rose Flanagan |
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| Online Video Ads Get a Boost |
Video content is flowing onto the Web, and the video-watching audience is growing correspondingly. So it's not surprising that direct marketers are showing...
By Brian Quinton |
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| Same Here, Same There |
A customer buys a fire-engine-red sweater from your Web site. Then that person exchanges it at your retail store for something more subdued, perhaps...
By Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| Saving Grace |
Sure, you want to save money. Everyone does. But why do you want to save? Are you putting away pennies for a sailboat, or to pay your daughter's way...
By Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| Selling the Shat |
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...
Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| Some Really Stupid PR Tricks |
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...
Ken Magill |
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| The Close Makes the Man |
“These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you, they're gold. And you don't get them. Because to give them to you is just...
By Jeff Schmitt |
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| The Offer Might Not Matter |
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...
Beth Negus Viveiros |
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| The USPS Shapes Up |
Great. We won. Congress has passed a postal reform bill, and our worries are over, right? Wrong. Although some reports stated that the 2007 rate hike...
By Larry Riggs |
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| Watch Out for the Little Guys |
Sure, many of the big players in direct response have embraced database marketing's best practices. They're extending analytic capabilities across all...
By Richard H. Levey |
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| Web 2.0 Meets the Senior Set |
I have seen the future, and it looks a lot like me — with a little less hair, a few more age spots and a nice Florida tan. Computer and application...
BRIAN QUINTON |
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| Where Do You Hang? |
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...
BETH NEGUS VIVEIROS |
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| Yahoo! Strikes Out Again |
Remember how it was in college? You were too busy partying in the dorm or frat house to fight your way through Dante's “Divine Comedy” and...
THOMAS L. COLLINS |
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