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Social Media: Marketing Darling of the Moment or Just a Shiny New Tool?
I’m back from my West Coast trip spent visiting clients in LA and, of course, attending the DMA 2010 in San Francisco. For me, the biggest take-away from this year’s conference was a big affirmation that ICS is on the right track with our product/service mix and integration of online and offline marketing tools… and [...]
Inc. Magazine Names ICS as One of the Fastest-Growing Companies – 4 Years Running
I have some bright news to share on this rainy Michigan morning… Inc. magazine named us on their 5000 List – for the fourth year in a row! I will include our news release in this post so you can see the details on why we continue to grow, even during a slow economy. We’re [...]
Think “Leads,” Not “Web Site Visitors”
We’re in the process of updating our Web site (well, when aren’t we in the process of updating or optimizing our Web site?) and maybe many of you are doing same right now. Here’s some advice to make sure you’re getting the most out of your Web site: Stop thinking in terms of VISITORS. Think [...]
2010 DMA Should Be Interesting
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. [...]
Our Technology Solutions provide administrative efficiencies for Marketers
I was working with a client this week who was looking to implement a new Customer Loyalty program. Our role in the opportunity was to create a new technology portal to manage their customer loyalty activities via the web. This year’s program was going to increase in size … forcing the client to look at [...]
Rethinking the Mature Market
I was reading an interesting study yesterday from Pew Research. The title of it was “Generations Online in 2009″. The interesting note that I picked-up from the study was the growth in Internet usage in the mature segment of the population: The biggest increase in Internet use since 2005 can be seen in the 70-75 [...]
Volume down as prices go up for USPS. What does it mean for Marketers?
May 11th is the date targeted for postage rates to go up across the board. The average rate increase is about 3.8% and does vary by segment. Of course, the behind the scenes story contributing to the increase is the decline in recent mail volume … with a 9.5 billion piece decline in mail for 2008. According [...]
Questions to Get Your Paid Search Campaign Started Right
I’ve run into a number of clients who really don’t understand where to start when it comes to generating targeted leads through paid search. The more I thought about it, I decided it would be helpful to provide some guidelines for clients to gain a basic understanding of things you need to think about to run a successful [...]
Where do you go to find information on a business?
We have had some discussion around the office recently on where people go today when they want to find a particular business or business product? It use to be that our only option was to pull out the “Yellow Pages”. Obviously today, the Internet has changed our world in this area … but, how many people [...]
Build your email mix with sweepstakes!
I was visiting with a client the other day who was doing an excellent job of acquiring their customers’ email addresses. They are very experienced marketers who focus the majority of their marketing efforts on cross-sell activities. They were leveraging enticing promotional sweepstakes as a way to drive email activation from customers who had not previously provided [...]