About six months ago I returned a call to a customer who asked to speak with me.  This customer works for a small agency that typically buys various types of data from AccuData.  The call went something like this:

Customer:  “I’d like to keep working with AccuData but a competitor is offering a loyalty program if I go with them.”

Me:  “I certainly would like to keep serving your company, tell me about the program.”

Customer:  “It’s a points program and I can cash in points for things I want or that my company needs.”

Me:  “Can you please give me an example?”

Customer:  “They have a cookie of the month club…”

Buying direct marketing services = cookies? 

It struck me then that as far as loyalty programs go, the bar had been set fairly low in the direct marketing services business.  This was the spark that kindled the eventual development of AccuPortal, a set of services and benefits we’ve just launched to help our reseller customers.

Click here to read the press release.

We wanted to build something that would materially help our reseller customers thrive as well as reward them for their business.  AccuPortal offers our customers proven sales and marketing tools and data cards – all of which can be customized and private labeled.  The system offers professional sales training as good as anything offered by any of the well known sales training consultants out there.

Beyond this, we’ve introduced the industry’s first Money-Back Data Guarantee and AccuCash, our own loyalty program.  But AccuCash pays just that – cash, not cookies.

I’ll report back on progress we’re having enrolling members and maybe we’ll be able to get a customer or two to offer up a case study or two to demonstrate how this tool increased their business.

As PODI show continues, I am amazed at how the forum always offers new and exciting ways for participants to stay relevant. AccuData exhibited at Print ’09 and I came away from the event struck by not only the incredible printing technologies available to marketers today but the additional value-added services offered as well.

One of the best exhibits last year was Kodak’s. It was large and very high-tech but on a more practical level, it was jam-packed with great information for printers interested in becoming “MSP”s – Marketing Service Providers. This year, I can only imagine that many more attendees will be offering – or looking for just those kinds of services.

Why? Because it’s just smart business. At the end of the day, printers touch a huge portion of the direct mail and other direct marketing materials produced every year – direct mail alone is still a huge $51 billion business. But thanks to shrinking margins, dwindling budgets and attacks by competitors, the printing business is more competitive than ever before.

To remain competitive, many printers have become, or will become MSPs. What this means is that they are layering value-added marketing services (advice, creative, PURLs and email, data, analytics and database systems) on top of their traditional “ink & paper” business – allowing them to assume the role of seamless partner as opposed to disposable vendor.

Today, a successful MSP can help their clients more accurately target and develop better direct marketing materials and increase ROI.  The risk of NOT doing this is the possibility of losing key accounts to more sophisticated players. I’ve seen this happen and it’s ugly.

If you aren’t at PODI, give AccuData a call. We’re here to help as we have done for hundreds of other printers across the country.

Wow, 2010! The New Year has always been my favorite time of year for business –it’s a time of renewal and excitement for the future.  We all get a fresh start on January 1^st.

Or do we?

The boom is over – and boom-time companies, executives and marketers are done if they don’t have what it takes to survive in the new economy.

Most economists believe the country is out (or nearly out) of recession and that we’ll see some growth this year.  But recovery isn’t the only story we’re likely to hear about in 2010.  If you are a student of business history you know there is something very interesting going on – something that has already reshaped industries across all sectors and will continue to do so all year long.

Frankly, for some companies it wasn’t hard to make money during the boom.  While some companies and executives certainly did better than others, success was evident in abundance.  New ideas were easily embraced by investors and consumers.  The bar for marketers was low – everything worked and delivered sky high ROI!

Not anymore.  Now it’s time for the real stars to emerge.

Companies without a clear competitive advantage and sound management won’t make it.  Marketers can’t just throw money at the problem; products and services must have compelling value, quality marketing and delivery to succeed.

If you don’t believe me think Pontiac or Circuit City and countless other mid-sized and small businesses whose storefronts were shuttered all over America.  I’ll wager that many of the superstar CMO’s from the past decade won’t make it in the next.  Now it’s about strategy, planning, sharp pricing, distribution, etc. and these things are hard.

Now is the time to get smart – while you still can.

There are a host of great service companies, including AccuData that can help.  Now is the time to reach out, challenge your thinking and see if you can find better services at better prices.  If you don’t use services, you should seriously consider it.  Service companies can spot trends across industry sectors well in advance – they deal with hundreds, even thousands, of companies.  It’s sometimes easier to spot opportunities from this vantage point.

I promise that your competition (and your colleague down the hall) is thinking hard about this.  They are making a move.  You don’t want to be standing still when they run past you.

A client recently asked AccuData to develop a predictive model to help target a large national direct mail and email campaign. Notice the request was to develop “a” predictive model - we actually wound up building ten, and despite the incremental cost of building ten vs. one, they drove sky-high ROI for the campaign.

Why did we do this and why did it deliver economically?

Predictive models built for a national prospect universe assume that individuals or households with similar characteristics behave the same way in each MSA. They don’t. Many marketers approach this problem by asking their analytics team to include a geographic factor, essentially asking their team to make sure the predictive model includes a factor for geography. But this is often a mistake.

First, in many cases the geographic factor is weak compared to other key elements (e.g., demos, lifestyle factors). In this case the geographic factor falls out of the model. Alternatively the geographic factor could be so strong that other important variables fall out of the model.

What works?

In our experience the best way to address the challenge is to build distinct models for each key market. In this way a weak, but potentially important geographic factor, is incorporated into your targeting. At the same time a strong geographic factor is incorporated because you will develop models at the MSA level (or some other geo level).

If you are a large marketer you must fight for every 1/100th of a percent of response. In our experience, building localized models for key markets delivers critical competitive advantage.

Last time I talked about Direct Mail, a passion of mine and a marketing tactic some think is dying. 

Despite record postage and the state of the economy, direct mail is still extremely effective.   How do I know?  Hundreds of AccuData customers as well as the direct mail I personally recieve tell me so.  If you are reading this and thinking, “not mine” then it’s time to think hard about how your company funds, develops and executes your direct mail.  It’s time to look inward, not outward at the economy or the USPS.

I recently received a direct mail piece from one of the nation’s largest insurance companies.  To my amazement, I could see through the outer envelope, could see the offer through the paper.  I wondered at the time if this was intentional, after all this company is a large, sophisticated marketer.  Surely every aspect of their direct mail must be tested thoroughly.  Well maybe this was, but I don’t think so.  This was an attempt to shave a fraction of a cent from each mail piece.  Paper is expensive right?  Let’s save some money by reducing paper weight! 

“Boss, maybe we should move our budget to pay per click, direct mail isn’t working anymore!”  As my good English friend and marketing guru Doug Bewsher might say “Bollock”!

First things first - what is the purpose of an outer envelope?  To convince the recipient to open it of course!  Now I have received mailers that were designed to be see-through and a few of them were fantastic.  Not this piece.  This was just lazy.  If I can see through the outer envelope to the content within, if I can see the offer then I don’t have to open the package.  I won’t read the letter, won’t read the brochure,  won’t give the company a chance - particularly if the offer is just so-so.

Large insurance company - you know who you are.  Put on some weight please.  I like em’ heavy!

What a time for marketers, huh? Most would say, this is a gloom and doom time for us—budgets are slashed, responses are down, and what are we going to do but ride out the wave?

Absolutely not. I see a lot of editorial and industry advertising out there urging marketers to spend more during this downturn to take advantage of weaker competitors – and I agree. I see literally thousands of unique customer transactions per month and I’m seeing three distinct groups.

One group is in the process of throwing in the towel. They are getting beaten by their competitors. Another group is hunkering down, perhaps emphasizing “core” businesses at the expense of new ventures, but keeping their marketing alive. Another group is “leaning-in” and marketing more, by getting more mail in the stream, increasing email activity, and putting more advertising out there – but they are doing it smarter with sharper targeting, the application of predictive models and good offers. “Doing more with less” is no longer a platitude. It’s now survival.

AccuData is in the third camp. We are leaning-in. Last week AccuData launched our new B2B campaign and blog to dedicate and memorialize to our clients and colleagues the great opportunity we see. I’m excited about 2009.

Welcome to AccuData’s – and quite possibly the database marketing industry’s first actionable blog – Letters@, where you’ll have the opportunity to hear and learn from AccuData’s executive leadership and experts and tap into their experience and expertise. There will also be posts from our data, marketing analytics and database marketing experts.

More than a blog, our goal is to create a conduit of shared information, a platform for discussing best practices in customer acquisition, development and retention. More importantly, we see this as an opportunity for all of you – clients and industry players alike – to collaborate and learn from AccuData’s 20 years of experience helping clients accurately target qualified buyers and increase ROI.

Our goal: To create a forum that will deliver insightful tools, tips, tricks and discussions to simplify and improve the decision making process for those seeking to enhance their database and direct marketing efforts.

Coming soon: A series of 10 slightly shocking but strikingly powerful marketing insights to include:

• The New Era of Predictive Analytics
• The Atrophy of Direct Mail
• Get back to the future with Web 0.5

So, be sure to come back and come back often. Bookmark us. Subscribe to our RSS feed.

Until then…