Q&As

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 to help B-to-B companies better acquire and retain customers. Here’s a roundup of new developments to help you meet your business objectives.

Computer and application developers have long talked about the “grandma test”: If their hardware or programs were intuitive enough for older relatives to use, they knew they had something a broad swath of the everyday online public could find value in.

U.S. shoppers can expect to see a lot more red this year as Product RED, a celebrity driven charity, adds new partners and products. But it remains to

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 hide special offers by making them viewable only through freeze-frame technology. The “top idea” here was marketers’ attempts to dissuade consumers from using digital video recorders, such as TiVo, to fast-forward through commercials.

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

Sure, many of the big players in direct response have embraced database marketing’s best practices. They’re extending analytic capabilities across all mediums and integrating marketing channels into a single file.

But they’d better watch their backs: Small and mid-tier companies

In the feature Stay in Touch (Direct, Oct. 1), PTC’s senior director of worldwide channel marketing was incorrectly identified as Greg Norman. Greg James

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

Marketing databases are overflowing with information — they can hold millions of records and thousands of data points on prospects and customers. The ready availability of data has fueled a tendency to analyze things to death; everyone wants to know something slightly different. An inexperienced analyst can end up fulfilling 101 analytical requests, when probably only 10 or so relate to actual success.

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