2010 DMA Should Be Interesting
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Marketing Technology Solutions, Search Engine Marketing, Uncategorized, integrated marketing
2009 Direct Marketing Association's Annual Conference Oct. 17-21
I can’t remember a year where we have had as much change in our marketing world. With the economy struggling, this alone has had significant impact. Add onto this the evolution of new digital tools such as Search, Social Media and Mobile and this year’s Direct Marketing Association’s national convention is bound to be interesting.Â
Yet my initial day at the conference reinforces much of what I thought. While new tools and mediums evolve, much of the foundation for targeted marketing remains the same:
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Test, test, test:  Continues to be the foundation for targeted media. With today’s powerful analytics, you can set up your testing strategies to optimize your marketing efforts whether it is your direct marketing acquisition effort, search or your web site.Â
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Permission-based: Permission-based marketing comes in the form of many names now (i.e. opt-in, preference centers, social media invitations), but a constant thread has been forming in marketing for over a decade. Today’s marketers realize that putting the consumer in the driver’s seat of their communications is the key in today’s world. Now there are just more targeted consumer options to opt-into than ever before.
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Technology Centric: Technology continues to drive our advances on many fronts. More user friendly tools to use without tapping the IT department. Increased abilities to personalize the medium to known customer attributes, easier and lower cost tools to manage all these efforts.
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Integration: A couple of decades ago, it was integrating targeted marketing with mass media to deliver improved performance. Today, these integration points are still important, but can be taken much further. Web site integration, retail point of sale, digital targeted media campaigns are now all thrown into the mix as well.Â
My point in all this is that while times are changing, likely 99.9+ percent of what we see at this year’s DMA will be based on the foundation already set.  Should be an interesting time to see how the industry is doing and where the experts see it all going. From my first day in attendance, what is being touted as “new” looks very familiar.
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