The better part of my career has been spent in an industry that can be highly demanding, overly stressful and can almost certainly be credited for the vast majority of my hair loss.  I worked nights, weekends, holidays, and even cancelled vacations; all for the sake of completing marketing strategies, print ads, radio spots, and point-of-sale materials within ridiculous and often impossible deadlines.  Yes, I would be talking about working in the wonderful world of ad agencies!

Those of you presently working in this beloved industry can appreciate the critical nature and time required to develop an effective marketing and advertising strategy that will yield results; whether it’s increasing product awareness, driving sales or stealing market share.  Often times I think back to those sleepless nights spent with colleagues racking our brains on how to assemble what we felt would be the next great marketing campaign, a campaign that would exceed our client’s expectations and earn us a famed Addy.

However, the truth is that it rarely worked out this way, with the exception of the sleepless nights.  The reason being is that the ‘next great marketing campaign’ was typically assembled with little or no reliable data to support the strategy.  I know what you’re thinking, ‘we did lots of research to support our marketing strategy!’  Ok… you probably did.  I’m sure you spent an insurmountable amount of time on Google seeking out anything you could scrape together about the competition and finding industry research that’s probably 3-years too old.  And just to impress your client, you may have even performed some in-person interviews with customers and employees in hopes of providing your client with the primary research needed to justify your expensive ideas.  Then, you took all that information, mixed in a lot of complex marketing terminology to make it sound important, incorporated lots of fancy graphs highlighting your outdated research, threw in some creative rationale with symbolic references Picasso himself would have a difficult time deciphering, and voilà… you hashed out an impressive comprehensive strategy that will certainly WOW your client!

I can say all this because I’m also guilty of doing it, and there’s a popular adolescent term today that I now use to describe such an approach… EPIC FAIL!  Not only does it do the strategic process an injustice, it also means it likely won’t be long before the harsh reality officially sets in… the campaign doesn’t perform as promised.  This is an agency’s worst nightmare because they are immediately faced with the dreaded question from their client: ‘WHY?’ This single word is capable of sending an entire agency into panic mode, forcing them to quickly scramble to find reasons that prove the shortcomings were beyond the agency’s control and would have worked if (insert excuse here) wouldn’t have happened, then incorporating those excuses into a formal response using more complex marketing lingo that makes you sound like an expert, knowing exactly what adjustments to make next time.  The hope here is the agency finds the right balance of craft and confusion in their response to leave the client scratching their head to the point of believing you.  If that doesn’t work, you will likely find the president of the agency on their knees agreeing to the sale price of his/her first born in order to keep the business with assurances the next campaign will be better. This approach is risky, as you may not be afforded a ‘next time’.

Now does it always happen this way?  Of course not!  There are plenty of agencies out there with the resources and capabilities to provide their clients the necessary analytics to support the recommended strategies, often resulting in a more efficient use of marketing dollars and greater ROI.  Unfortunately, most agencies are too small to justify the expense of hiring analysts and purchasing the proper equipment, data licenses, and software needed to give them the competitive edge they need.  They are forced to rely on sleek creative instead of sound analytics, market assumptions using complex marketing terminology versus predictive modeling with proven success.  The truth is that with an economy that is still unstable, companies are much more frugal with their advertising dollars and are likely to place greater emphasis on strategies supported by data and analytics that will maximize their marketing dollars and result in greater ROI.  The agency able to provide these analytics to support their strategy, creative rationale and tactical execution will likely be the one marveling in healthier bottom lines.

Don’t despair small agencies, there is a logical solution for you.  Elect to partner with an expert that can offer you a wide variety of data solutions to help grow your clients business and offer the sound analytical edge you need; whether it’s solidifying current client relationships or winning that new piece of business.  Work smarter, not harder!  By doing so, when the time comes around to review campaign effectiveness, perhaps you’ll be discussing an increase in client spending to build on proven and trackable successes instead of once again facing that dreaded question of ‘WHY?’

Mortgage rates are at historic lows and homeowners are choosing to stay in their homes longer.  Under these conditions, prime refinances are the most prevalent mortgage activity.  The good news is there are over 60 million homeowners whose current interest rate is higher than today’s prevailing rate.  The bad news is 42 million of those are either upside down with their mortgage or have a credit score too low to allow for a prime refinance.

However, that leaves 18 million homeowners who can qualify and benefit from a prime refinance loan.  To identify these prospects, we track mortgage refinances nationwide on a weekly basis.  Then, using credit criteria, LTV and home valuation models, and historic interest rate information in conjunction with a host of demographic variables, we build models which predict the prospects with the greatest need for a prime refinance loan.

If you are trying to target prime refinance prospects, make sure you are using a combination that includes current home value, LTV, interest rate and some form of credit screening.   In today’s market, you will truly capitalize on the refinance boom if you can reach these homeowners in need before rates go back up.

Sitting in a meeting with a client the topic of marketing measurement came up. I have worked with this client for almost a year now and it was the first time I was able to get them to look past response rate. A break through!

In the business of direct marketing we tend to focus on creative, print cost, production cost, and response rate. But many stop there. What about the other metrics on measuring a successful campaign.

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Too many companies approach direct marketing as a project not a campaign.  Straight from Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com)

cam·paign Pronunciation: \(ˌ)kam-ˈpān\ Function: noun Etymology: French campagne, probably from Italian campagna level country, campaign, from Late Latin campania level country, from Latin, the level country around Naples Date: circa 1656

1: a connected series of military operations forming a distinct phase of a war

2: a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result <election campaign>

Your direct marketing solution should be a SERIES of OPERATIONS!

Better yet, it should be a series of operations that are linked through learning and improvement from one to the next.

Marketers such as CapOne, GEICO, Chase and Citi  have a never-ending mail stream into the homes of America refining their technique continuously.  You don’t need to emulate the volume, just the technique.