Direct Selling for Better Insurance Business
In a tough economy when businesses are slashing budgets and wanting a clear ROI on every Rand spent, there’s nothing like direct marketing to validate your marketing investment.
I had the privilege of meeting with Lester Wunderman at the DMA Conference in New Orleans. Where he launched his latest book called BEING DIRECT: Making Advertising Pay.
In addition to revealing how to reach consumers and measure the impact of any given marketing campaign, it shows us how to think outside the box to find - or develop - new media through which to connect with our public.
Creating relationships with customers is crucial. Lester emphasises that today, more than ever, marketing is less about exposure and more about developing a customized experience that meets each individual consumer's unique needs. And building strong customer relationships is important. With this in mind, Lester has developed the revolutionary concept of a "Consumer's Communication Bill of Rights." This is the first time ever that a marketer has laid out what consumers should expect from advertisers vying for their attention.
Lester Wunderman's Consumer's Communication Bill of Rights
His contention is that consumers deserve to be treated with respect by all businesses trying to sell to them. He writes: "Today, and in the future, advertisers will have an enhanced opportunity to use information to serve their customers and prospects. Good service requires good information. Both require good judgment and prudence on the part of all parties regarding the expending commercial conversations of the Information Age."
The Bill of Rights states:
This couldn't be more timely. And the approach he calls upon businesses to take, will ultimately expand their commercial opportunities by creating better customer relationships.
19 Principles that underlie all successful direct marketing campaigns BEING DIRECT also covers the 19 principles below - and throughout the book, Lester gives us proven and powerful techniques, whether using traditional media such as direct mail or reaching out to customers via the Internet and email marketing. These techniques are important in creating long-term, sustainable and profitable relationships with customers.
Powerful words, from a powerful man - the true Father of Direct Marketing.
Winnifred Knight
winn@themarketingsite.com
www.themarketingsite.com
In a tough economy when businesses are slashing budgets and wanting a clear ROI on every Rand spent, there’s nothing like direct marketing to validate your marketing investment.
First published in 1995, the report is released every other year in conjunction with DMA’s Annual Conference and delivers historic trends, current year estimates, and one-year and five-year projections for direct marketing expenditures, sales, ROI and employment.
An online presence can take several forms and have any one of multiple objectives.
A Glimpse of the Future
Three years from now - or perhaps sooner - the direct marketing scene (the scene not the techniques) will be barely recognisable from that which we know and love today: the carefully delineated, agencies; the internecine warfare; the specialists and non- specialists; and so on, will all begin to disappear.
In the recent past, the position and relevance of direct marketing (DM); in the information age has been viewed as a 'dying' facet of the advertising industry. However, research and trends have proved that direct marketing will have an impact on the economic growth and lead the industry in one-to-one marketing.
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