Direct Response articles from December 2005

Direct Response archives from December 2005

Editorial: Playing strategic games.(Editorial)
December 1, 2005... Good chess players say you have to think at least three moves ahead to out-fox your opponent. Great chess players think even further into the future - some can see how the whole game will unfold in just a few moves. Marketing often calls...

News Focus: DMA - TV star lifts DM image.(Direct Marketing)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Former BBC Watchdog presenter Alice Beer is fronting a new DMA campaign aimed at building more positive consumer perceptions of the direct marketing industry. Phase one of the initiative involved the launch in November of a consumer...

News Focus: Survey - Email open rates decline.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Email volumes continued to rise last quarter but open rates in the UK have fallen over the past year, according to two separate reports. The DMA's fourth quarter email benchmarking survey found that email volumes rose by almost a third in...

News Focus: Smart Awards - EuroDirect wins top gong.
December 1, 2005... EuroDirect beat Experian, MM Teleperformance and HLB to take the top gong at October's Marketing Direct Smart Awards. It won the Supplier of the Year Award for its achievements over the past 12 months. In that time, the supplier won more...

News Focus: Restructuring - Ebiquita forces out MD.(managing director)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Data services provider Ebiquita has laid off managing director Andy Taylor along with more than a fifth of its staff in a sweeping restructuring that sees the company shifting more of its focus to analytics. 'Our analytics business is...

News Focus: Telemarketing firms urged not to despair over TPS.
December 1, 2005... The death of the cold call will occur in June 2007 if registrations to the TPS continue at the current rate, attendees at the MM Teleperformance Executive Forum heard this November. Speaking at the event on emerging and current trends and...

News Focus: Events planner.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... December 1 - Mobilemarketing Conference Venue: Congress House, Great Russell Street, London. Contact: John McKee 07734 053493 or johnmckee @mobilemarketinguk.com 1 - An Introduction to Door Drop Marketing Venue: The Scotsman...

News Focus: What's new - Digital Print - Real Print Digital.
December 1, 2005... Former Olwen co-founders Andy Ruddle and Peter Rivett have launched REAL Digital International, a print shop they claim will offer faster speeds in continuous reel-to-sheet, fully variable, full-colour digital printing than currently available....

News Focus: What's new - New Launches - QAS.
December 1, 2005... QAS has launched a range of solutions aimed at speeding up the customer authentication and verification process for financial services, retail and telecoms firms. IDentifier will use unique data sources from QAS and Experian, and third-party...

News Focus: What's new - Acxiom.
December 1, 2005... Acxiom has unveiled a raft of new products, including InfoBase Lifestyle Universe, a national database of UK consumer information, the Personicx family of segmentation products, and two analytics services - AcxiomOnline and DemographicsNow UK.

News Focus: What's new - Acquisitions - IAS.
December 1, 2005... B2B agency IAS Marketing & Communication has bought RiverInteractive, a web and database developer. RiverInteractive focuses on web site accessibility with clients including AstraZeneca, The Equal Opportunities Commission, and Medeval. The...

News Focus: What's new - Connectus.(acquired Mailtrack)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Global online marketing technology group Connectus has acquired e-marketing firm Mailtrack to strengthen its UK presence. The firm will now trade under the name Connectus Direct UK, with Mailtrack co-founders Guy Marson and Russell Parsons at...

News Focus: What's new - Postal - DX Services.
December 1, 2005... Business mail services provider DX Services has launched DX Mail, a new service for first-class business mail. Aimed at saving time and money for customers, the service allows users to pass DX their mail to be sorted, weighed, franked and...

News Focus: Diary of a Doormat.
December 1, 2005... Roy Barker is managing director of Wegener DM Results, the consumer data company's data management and intelligence arm. Born in Liverpool, he now lives in West Sussex with his partner and two young children. With two lively kids, you...

News Focus: CACI - Report shows UK wealth still cut along regions.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... CACI's annual Wealth of the Nation report shows there is still a North/South divide in the UK in terms of income. The report profiles the average household income for every postcode in the UK, revealing the richest and poorest areas as well...

News Focus: Home Shopping - Catalogues top for retail.
December 1, 2005... Shopping from catalogues is more popular than shopping on the high street according to consumers, a report from Experian has found. The 2005 Experian Home Shopping Survey asked 700 consumers and discovered that two-thirds believed...

News Focus: Eurodirect - Mail errors.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Either the name or the address is wrong in 28 per cent of unsolicited direct mail, new research from consumer data specialist EuroDirect shows. After monitoring mailings from 330 UK businesses over a period of several months, EuroDirect...

News Focus: DMA - Three agencies lead in awards nominations.
December 1, 2005... Three agencies lead the pack with 11 nominations each for this year's DMA Awards, which take place on 6 December at the Grosvenor House in London. Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voelkel, Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw and Harrison Troughton...

News Focus: Postcomm - Royal Mail still top as postal clients blind to open market.
December 1, 2005... Royal Mail remains in a dominant position in the postal sector as business mailers have been slow to take note of the opening of the market to competition, Postcomm's Competitive Market Review: 2005 revealed. The postal regulator's report,...

News Focus: Legal Eagle.
December 1, 2005... James Milligan is legal and public affairs adviser at the Direct Marketing Association. This column is not intended to constitute legal advice. For specific legal advice, contact your solicitor. For DMA membership details, contact Sean...

News Focus: Predictive Dialling - Ofcom announces tougher measures for silent callers.
December 1, 2005... Tough new measures proposed by Ofcom, aimed at cracking down on silent calls by telemarketers, have received some positive response from the industry. The DMA welcomed the policy statement by the communications regulator, noting that it...

Movers: Appointment at Conduit.
December 1, 2005... Zowie Boiardi has joined Conduit as broker account manager. She joins from The Preference Service, where she worked as account manager. In her new role, Boiardi will be responsible for managing all existing broker relationships and new product...

Movers: Appointment at CMW Ignite.
December 1, 2005... Sam Eccles has been promoted to group account director at CMW Ignite, the retail division of Clark McKay & Walpole. Eccles joined the agency in 2002 as account director. CMW Insight clients include Renault Retail Group and Staples.

Movers: Appointment at Experian.
December 1, 2005... James Dand has joined Experian's marketing services division as senior business consultant where he will work with financial services clients on their critical business issues. Dand leaves Barclays Premier where he was head of customer...

Movers: Appointment at Enpocket.
December 1, 2005... Mike Baker has taken up the role of CEO at mobile media firm Enpocket. He was previously president and COO at the firm.

Movers: Appointment at Mobile 365.
December 1, 2005... Mark Jones has been appointed sales director UK and Ireland at mobile messaging and data services firm Mobile 365. Jones joined the firm in 2003 as UK sales manager from WIN, where he was business development and account manager.

Opinion: Are DM agencies being edged out?
December 1, 2005... The self-assembly pulpit is locked away. No ranting this month - just a calm look at the media-buying revolution. Media shops have become hugely important both to clients and the big communications groups, such as WPP and Omnicom, because...

How to... choose the right data cleansing set-up.
December 1, 2005... Before you communicate with your customers, it is vital that your database be of good quality if you do not want to risk the integrity of your product. But is it always right to outsource? asks Chris Cuffe. My wife loves a particular...

Creative Masterclass on... global digital CRM.(Customer Relationship Management )
December 1, 2005... If you want to garner success on the global stage, it is vital that you carefully tailor your CRM for the international market, says David Brown. CRM does great things for digital marketing. It makes us accountable and it makes our impact...

Data Clinic: Ask the experts.(Panel Discussion)
December 1, 2005... This month our panel of data specialists looks at the pros and cons of combining customer databases, boosting sales with a second list manager, and data validation processes. We have recently acquired a number of European companies as...

Data Clinic: Data Health Check.
December 1, 2005... Marie Curie As a charity that deals with one of the world's most prominent diseases, Marie Curie found its massive data file of donors badly in need of cleaning. THE CASE One in three people develop cancer during their lives and one in...

Data Clinic: Case Study Special - Winner, Direct Response Intelligence Awards 2005.
December 1, 2005... The British ArmyRecruitment is an ongoing job for the Army, and one that has been helped by DM sustaining young people's interest until they are old enough to enlist. Marching across the countryside early in the morning while hauling heavy...

Data Clinic: How to buy... through categorisation.
December 1, 2005... When buying data through categorisation, don't limit yourself by being too subjective and choosing only the obvious lists. The rising number of niche lists on the market presents marketers with opportunities to grow their businesses. The...

Data Clinic: Get connected - As the managing director of data services provider.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Blue Sheep, Iain Lovatt takes a great interest in the internet and what it can offer him - either enabling him at work or at home. Today speedy access to data is essential. I am surprised when I visit firms where staff have limited or no...

Data Clinic: DataTalk.
December 1, 2005... Actual and modelled data are now part of the menu that clients. can choose from, but they perform very different roles and selecting the right data is the key to success, says Peter Thompson. Last year when I was asked to comment on the...

Data Clinic: What I do in data - Neil Fretwell, data planning director, FCBi London.(Interview)
December 1, 2005... Q: HOW DID you arrive in this job? I started out in JDA's planning team, building detailed campaign response analysis, back when only accountants used spreadsheets and before the term 'data planner' ever existed. The data company I...

Data Clinic: What is... Wiki.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... A wiki is an online tool that allows users to update and publish content collaboratively. Anyone who has access can edit the content, using a simple tool and ordinary web browser. The term comes from the word 'wikiwiki', which means quick in...

Data Clinic: Technique - Does your bureau keep your data secure?
December 1, 2005... Customer data could be said to be a company's crown jewels - invaluable, and it is therefore worth considering just how secure your data is and what technology your bureau has in place to protect it, says Alan Timothy. Data is at the heart...

Data Clinic: A manager's view.
December 1, 2005... List managers are increasingly being asked to buy data for their clients, but communication between the agencies involved can be diluted, says Nigel Smart. The recent Marketing Direct Smart Awards quite rightly recognised those suppliers...

Data Clinic: Which list? A round-up of new or updated consumer, business and online lists.
December 1, 2005... NEW LISTS CONSUMER - EYESTORM.COM The eyestorm.com list is available for the first time through MM Teleperformance. The web site caters to educated, upmarket and affluent collectors of contemporary art. Prices range from pounds...

Home Shopping: Cross-channel shopping.
December 1, 2005... The internet has become a driving force for marketers as customers become more confident about the channels they use. It is easy to identify the launch of the Next Directory in the late-Eighties as the moment when old-fashioned definitions...

Telemarketing: Industry wake-up call.
December 1, 2005... Telemarketing is still a favoured medium for many large organisations, but how long will its potency last? For FilmFour, the telephone is one of its most successful channels for signing up new subscribers. The company invests significantly in...

Envelopes: Impact on delivery.
December 1, 2005... With Royal Mail's pricing in proportion on the horizon, it is now vital that your envelope makes maximum impact. With this in mind, we decided to let four agencies judge each others' offerings. The humble envelope is ruffling quite a few...

Secrets of my Success: John Watson, Managing partner of Watson Phillips Norman.
December 1, 2005... I've always had a peculiar fascination with what makes people respond. My Dad used to subscribe to Reader's Digest and book clubs and we had every condensed book going. Until I was older, I thought all novels were 60 pages long and came in...