Disqus - Latest Comments for cdemartine

Re: Amazon supports, eBay opposes new Internet sales tax bill - Direct Marketing News

NextMark — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:55:18 -0000

What is the true economic impact of this legislation in terms of direct, indirect, and induced consequences? If you consider the online sales impact due to elasticity of demand, and the economic implications for employment in states with a high dependency on revenue from direct marketing (online and offline), then the end result may actually be a decrease in tax revenues. Unfortunately, politics get in the way of an objective review of legislation.

Show me an objective study that shows how this will help vs. harm the U.S. economy. It has already been proven in the state of Vermont, that the negative consequences outweigh the benefits, but who has done the research at an aggregate level (all 50 states)?

Re: Reed Elsevier to Divest Reed Business Information - B2B @ FolioMag.com

NextMark — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:09:49 -0000

I've had nothing but positive experiences working with the U.S. based team of data marketers.

Re: Look for More Data Diversity in the Years Ahead

NextMark — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:39:46 -0000

Direct mail is (although costly) often favored because it is measureable and is most actionable for new customer acquisition. The match back processes that service bureaus use for response attribution have become more automated so even the web orders can now be tracked by to individual prospect lists for evaluating response rates and lifetime value. Of course, it's important to be diligent with that effort.

Re: Does Size Matter in the List Business?

NextMark — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:36:24 -0000

Size does matter -- and it's been more favorable recently for the little guy. I can name at least 5 brokers who I knew from past experience who are now independent. It's a lot easier today to get up and running as a list broker if you have the experience to make quality recommendations -- all of the technology is there and the overhead is minimal. It can even be a variable cost if you want it to be so if you don't get orders, then your information technology overhead is $0.

I believe we will see a rebound with list use in 2010. Personally, I'm opening the same amount of mail even though I'm receiving about 70% less of it. There's certainly less clutter as David says.

Re: Meredith Rotary Club Announces Top Prizes for the 2009 Great Ice Fishing Derby

NextMark — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:54:55 -0000

I caught a nice one last week behind my house (mascomariverfishing.com). The tag number is 33988 -- I have it on my desk at work.

Re: Direct Mail Spending to Plummet, E-mail to Soar: Borrell

NextMark — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:00:58 -0000

"Nearly two-thirds of Internet users check their e-mail at least once a month, while one-third go to the Web...," the study said. How often do we check our our mail boxes at home? Maybe the USPS needs to embrace targeted marketing and not expect discounts for saturation mailers to solve the problem. There are about 90,000 list titles on the market today -- and about 60,000 of the data cards are publicly available (see the Direct Magazine List Finder icon to the right).

What if the USPS had this same feature on their business page and offered a discount for those who inquired about a targeted list. Junk mail is history because it's costly, but targeted direct mail is desireable and profitable.

Re: The Quest for Better Datacards

NextMark — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:49:02 -0000

What if the data card counts were automatically updated by the service bureau? Would that add integrity to the process? I think we would all agree that it would be more efficien that way.

Re: Twitter is retaining more users than Nielsen thinks

NextMark — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:10:22 -0000

That's a good point regarding the third party applications. I use the TweetLater service, but I'd hope that Nielsen's research is based on posted activity and not the source of those posts.

Re: The Quest for Better Datacards

NextMark — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:13:37 -0000

Lee makes a very good point in regards to the top down approach. Why would any organization delegate this core product marketing function to those with little experience, and with minimal or no guidance? NextMark publishes a quarterly ranking of the top list managers by data card quality. You can search 60,000 of these data cards by clicking on the Direct ListFinder tool (column on the right).

Re: TweetLater Adds Authenticated Bit.ly URL Shortening

NextMark — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:13:09 -0000

This is good news for TweetLater users. bit.ly is among the favorite URL shorteners because it uses a 301 redirect, among other things. This is good as long as the service provider (bit.ly) doesn't change the redirect. Could that actually happen?

Re: 1.16 - Feasibility Analysis Stage - Researching Your Market

NextMark — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:22:20 -0000

Mailing lists are at the heart of every successful direct marketing campaign. Experts agree at least 40% of direct marketing success depends on mailing lists. The number of lists that have multiple options (email, postal, insert media, etc.) has increased significantly over time.

Re: NextMark Sees List Updating Practicing Improving

NextMark — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:34:15 -0000

It was encouraging to see the Canadian and international list managers on the list as well.

Re: NextMark Sees List Updating Practicing Improving

NextMark — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:18:04 -0000

It was also encouraging to see more international list managers updating their files.

Re: NextMark Ranks List Firms on Data Card Quality

NextMark — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:31:36 -0000

The new report is out for the 4th quarter 2008.

Re: Opt-In is Dead

NextMark — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:22:22 -0000

It's unfortunate but true, and to make matters worse there are a few double and triple plays out there for opt-in criteria that are by no means qualified. I've been thinking more about how to make it easier for users to opt-out individually and to let centralized programs facilitate the weeding out process.

Re: USPS: Keep the Mail Monopoly

NextMark — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:42:02 -0000

I'd love to see the USPS offer a free list search to show their commitment to all direct marketers and marketing service providers, and not just a sole source database of compiled names linked to thier application.