Some companies may do well to push up or back their early January 2000 mailings to avoid the Y2K dilemma and consumer sluggishness, said Mark Patron, managing director of Claritas.
Response rates often slow after a big event, whether good or bad, he said, pointing to Princess Diana’s death as an example.
“It’s like a consumer hangover,” said Shane Redding, director of Think Direct. “Maybe aspirin would be a good thing to sell direct.”
Patron and Redding were part of a “think tank” session on the state of direct marketing yesterday at the International DM Fair in London.
Joanna Reynolds, director of magazine publishing for The Readers Digest Association, noted that–like in the United States–a major problem facing the industry is attracting qualified staff right out of college.
The industry, she said, is still battling the misconception that the top candidates go into general advertising and “only the grubby and not that bright” go into DM.
Reynolds noted she’d love to see the UK DMA join forces with the Institute of Direct Marketing (a separate nonprofit educational body) to recruit and educate future DMers.
All the panelists agreed that DM needs to improve its image with consumers, and that things like the glut of e-mail spam plaguing online users doesn’t help.
Ian Hughes, managing director of MM Electronic Business Services, said he’s in favor of an E-Mail Preference Service from the UK DMA, but for it to work, it has to be on a global level, coordinating with the E-mail Preference Service of the U.S. DMA and others.
He’d like to see it go even further, becoming a customer preference service of sorts, that consumers could access and alter whenever their interests change. For example, he said, his wife is currently looking for a car. She’d love to receive automotive-related e-mail offers now, but not after she’s made her purchase.
