Chief Marketer Staff

• Short Cuts

  Todd Simon, senior vice president, Omaha Steaks International Inc. will deliver the keynote address at the 22nd Annual Catalog Conference May 23-25, 2005 at the Gaylord Palms Resort, Orlando, FL.

• List and Database News

  A listing of mailing list availabilities

• Listline e-Newsletter

  Walter Karl Inc. has assumed management of the Clinton Presidential
  Library Donors file. A total of 76,797 records are available.

• Act on Transaction

  The adage is a true for many retailers today as it was 50 years ago: “I know half of my advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half.” Retailers spend vast sums on marketing, yet they have a limited ability to prove their ROI. It doesn’t have to be that way.

• Wait’ll Next (Lunar) Year

  To celebrate the Lunar Year of the Rooster, Absolut vodka launched last month its first Web site for a non-English speaking audience. Scripted entirely in simplified Chinese characters, the site is filled with brand information and recipes based on the vodka. A leader in the mainland China market, Absolut wants to make inroads among affluent Chinese in North America, expanding a growing market for cocktails and premium spirits.

• Busy Signals: Interactive Marketing Hits Speed-Dial

  Sixty-one percent of marketers have earmarked up to 10% of their 2005 marketing budgets for interactive programs (including Internet and text messaging), per PROMO’s January survey of marketing execs. Most marketers (55%) spent less than 5% of their 2004 marketing budgets on interactive efforts. Cutting-edge campaigns feel like exclusive, private conversations between consumers and brands—often with intriguing messages or inside jokes.

• Beyond the Press Release

  How many times have you seen a competitor’s company or product featured in a newspaper or magazine article and said, “Why can’t my company get coverage like that?” The answer is often simple: The company used some form of public relations.

• Email

  Spam Wars: The Second Front

  The release of AOL 9.0, with its new personalized adaptive filters, and similar services from other Internet service providers (ISPs) has opened a new front of the spam wars. These filters are designed to learn from and adapt to the types of e-mail that each recipient considers to be spam. It has long been known that the more relevant the e-mail, the higher the likelihood a consumer will open and read it. These new filtering approaches reward relevant e-mail that consumers are likely to read and penalize e-mail that fails to address individual interests.

• Agencies

  Six Steps for Profitable Custom Modeling

  Faced with new customer types from search and affiliate programs, lower direct-buyer conversion rates, and higher overall costs, multichannel marketers are continually evaluating new strategies and techniques to maintain and improve acceptable levels of success. In the quest for the “next big thing” in marketing, many companies often overlook proven strategies that have the potential to greatly improve marketing performance.

• Agencies

  Putting the Sell in Creative

  The creative departments of catalog companies concentrate too much on esthetics and not enough on showing off merchandising and copy to drive response, Bill LaPierre, vice president, brokerage division of Peterborough, NH-based list firm Millard Group, told attendees