Direct Response articles from October 2003

Direct Response archives from October 2003

EDITORIAL: Grow up time for CRM.(Customer relationship management)(Editorial)
October 31, 2003... Journalists love a bad news story (the Germans have a name for this rather unattractive syndrome: Schadenfreude or delight in the misfortunes of others). CRM and all that goes with it - the painful corporate re-engineering, the overpriced...

NEWS FOCUS: The law - Clarification sought on e-regulation.
October 31, 2003... Hopes for a marketing-friendly UK version of forthcoming e-commerce legislation have been partly dashed. The EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, set to become law in the UK on 11 December, aims to reduce e-mail and SMS...

NEWS FOCUS: Financial services - Consultants to end credit card 'junk'.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... A group of direct marketing consultants are to take a roadshow to credit card providers to encourage them to 'get out of the junk mail cycle'. Operating under the name 'The Gettobusters', the group will pitch on how to solve the problem of...

NEWS FOCUS: Mergers - New branding for enlarged Prospect Shop operation.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Swedish publishing group Bonnier is to rebrand its direct marketing companies The Prospect Shop and newly acquired list broker Swetenhams as Prospect Swetenhams. Hugh Bessant, managing director of the combined business, said the rebranding...

NEWS FOCUS: Events Planner.(Brief Article)(Illustration)
October 31, 2003... OCTOBER 21 - Smart Awards 2003. Venue: Le Meridien Grosvenor Hotel, Park Lane. Contact: Cate MacCreadie on 0208 267 4017 21-23 - The DM Show. Venue: Earls Court One, London. See www.dmshow.co.uk 28 - Business 2 Business 2003...

NEWS FOCUS: Data - Data 'needs to persuade'.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Data specialists are ill-equipped to persuade client senior management of the benefits of database marketing, a gathering of data experts was told. At the Data 2003 Conference, hosted by Direct Response sister magazine Marketing Direct, a...

WHAT'S NEW: Clients - Coventry Building Society.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Coventry Building Society has appointed Alun Williams as customer strategy manager. See What I do in data, page 23.

WHAT'S NEW: Direct Mail - DMIS.(Direct Mail Information Service )(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... The volume of direct mail was up by 4.6 per cent between April and June this year, according to DMIS, compared with the same period last year. Expenditure has also risen by 3.4 per cent to pounds 545.29 million in the second quarter of this...

WHAT'S NEW: Loyalty - Tesco.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Scoring Points, the book that tells the story behind Tesco's Clubcard scheme, will be available to buy from the end of next month. It reveals how Tesco works with dunnhumby and EHS Brann to analyse its Clubcard data from 10 million households...

WHAT'S NEW: Loyalty - Nectar.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Nectar has announced it now has over 50 per cent of the UK's households signed up to its loyalty card programme for shoppers. The Nectar card, backed by its four key sponsors Sainsbury's, Debenhams, Barclaycard and BP, has some 13 million...

WHAT'S NEW: E-marketing - Wickes.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Wickes Home Improvement Centres is offering customers an SMS response option on its advertising. The company is using the QuickAddress software to obtain a customer's full address, which will automatically fall into a customer database. Wickes...

WHAT'S NEW: E-marketing - Thomson.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Thomson is offering a new e-mail marketing service called E-mail Marketing Solutions for Business, that combines data from Thomson Directories and the expertise of Mailtrack, a company that specialises in building and managing e-mail databases....

WHAT'S NEW: E-marketing - Kingswood MapMechanics.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... Kingswood MapMechanics has compiled a new Data Catalogue which lists international geomarketing products including QuickAddress Pro World and Matchcode International. What's New is compiled by Christina Papas. Send news to her at...

NEWS FOCUS: Diary of a doormat - Terry Hills, managing director of Capscan.
October 31, 2003... Terry Hiles is managing director of Capscan, a supplier of UK and international address management. He lives with his partner in Milton Keynes, is a keen cyclist and burgeoning water skier. Hiles is also fond of fine wines that remind him of...

NEWS FOCUS: B2B telephone preference service - B2B data providers seek answers on business TPS.(business to business)(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... B2B data providers have welcomed a decision by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to postpone until Spring 2004 the launch of the controversial corporate telephone preference service (TPS). The service was to be part of the EU...

NEWS FOCUS: DM survey - Data shines in otherwise flat quarter.(direct marketing)(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... There were mixed tidings for the industry in the Direct Marketing Association's second quarterly Industry Trends Survey for 2003. Survey respondents, who are DMA members, were less than positive, with 57 per cent seeing business flat or...

OPINION: Get the marketers out of marketing.
October 31, 2003... Professor Merlin Stone, a popular and authoritative business speaker, once said that if you want to succeed with customer relationship management (CRM), keep the marketers away. A provocative thought. But now the think tank-cum-networking...

HOW TO: Market FMCG brands the direct way.(Fast Moving Consumer Goods )
October 31, 2003... Most of the world's most famous brands have built their reputations with no direct consumer channel. Mike Beak suggests some simple steps to give a new lease of life to household names. FMCG brand marketers have traditionally struggled to...

LEGAL EAGLE.
October 31, 2003... Issues regarding power diallers, guidance for teleworking and the new EU directive on uncompetitive practices are discussed by James Milligan. Q: I've heard that there is a new law banning the use of power diallers. Is this correct? ...

CREATIVE MASTERCLASS: Creative masterclass on - How to incorporate data into the creative process.
October 31, 2003... It's nice to win awards for DM work, but Ian Bates believes it's better for both consumers and clients to make data the basis of your creative revolution. There's a direct marketing revolution going on. But as with all revolutions, it...

DATA CLINIC: Ask the experts.
October 31, 2003... Leading database specialists answer readers' real-life data problems. This month they tackle credit risk scoring, customer profiles, data responsiveness and B2B e-marketing. I work for a credit card company. We apply risk scores to our...

DATA CLINIC: Get connected.(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... During her working day, Zoe Eastwell needs to keep up with the news, while a recent house move required some geodemographic research. But she likes her web to be free. At NCH I manage the pitch process and need to keep up to date with...

DATA CLINIC: How to buy a data audit.
October 31, 2003... Data quality is vital for effective marketing and customer understanding. Julie Stanley shows how to arrange an audit to assess the state of your database. Data audits provide insight into the quality and potential effectiveness of your...

DATA CLINIC: Data Talk.
October 31, 2003... Targeting business customers has always been tricky. Anthony Hyde says less is more when it comes to buying data, as long as you make the most of it and don't expect too much from cheap names. There are two main reasons why B2B targeting is...

DATA CLINIC: What I do in data - Alun Williams, customer strategy manager, Coventry Building Society.(Interview)
October 31, 2003... How did you arrive in this job? An open-top sports car, bathed in sunshine - a contrast to the five-hour commute to London in my last job. I have a passion for doing the right thing for the customer. At the Coventry - a mutual building society...

DATA CLINIC: What is - A gains chart?(Brief Article)
October 31, 2003... A gains chart displays the performance/results of a propensity model - in most instances the propensity to buy your product. It shows segments of a database ranked in order of expected responsiveness. The prediction of the performance of...

DATA CLINIC: Data health check - Esure.
October 31, 2003... Drawing volume data from many sources gave the direct insurer a potential headache when it came to cleaning its data, so it developed innovative deduplication and suppression practices. The case Esure is the insurance venture backed by...

DATA CLINIC: Case study - Texaco.
October 31, 2003... When its successful nine-year-old loyalty scheme started to feel its age, the fuel giant refreshed its data segmentation using demographic profiling to reach higher value consumers. Simon Clarke reports. Petrol isn't sexy. As such it is...

DATA CLINIC: Technique - Creating a single marketing database.
October 31, 2003... Rapid structural and strategic changes in business mean it is more important than ever to create a single marketing database for customer communication and service. Dene Jones of Dealve explains how to go about it. Scope the project ...

DATA CLINIC: A manager's view.
October 31, 2003... Mailers and brokers often assume a ceiling price on data, says Ben Ennis, but they need to consider a name's quality before they start driving a hard bargain. The price of data is always going to be a thorny issue for mailers, list...

DATA CLINIC: Which list? A round-up of new or updated consumer, business and online lists.
October 31, 2003... New Lists Consumer greenfingers.com The greenfingers.com database, consisting of 18,000 0 to 12-month buyers who have shopped online and through the greenfingers.com catalogue, is now available for rent through Swetenhams. ...

E-MARKETING: What now for e-mail data?
October 31, 2003... Strict new controls on electronic communication take effect this month. Clive Walker offers some timely advice on staying the right side of the law. It's only a matter of weeks until the UK imposes strict new controls on the use of...

DATABASE MANAGEMENT: Safety in numbers.
October 31, 2003... Targeting is vital for successful direct marketing, but just how many segments is too many? Noelle McElhatton finds usability is the key when it comes to grouping your customers. When EuroDirect was asked by the English Regional Tourist...

CRM SHOW PREVIEW: Return to CRM.
October 31, 2003... CRM is often oversold and badly implemented. Speakers at this month's CRM 2003 event will tell how to avoid the pitfalls. No industry has embraced CRM so fervently than financial services, and with such mixed results. Possessing huge...

SECRETS OF MY SUCCESS: Simon Swetenham, former chief executive and founder, Swetenhams.
October 31, 2003... When I was 11 years old, we were asked at school to paint a picture of ourselves in 20 years' time. I painted myself in a big chair with a cigar and a glass of port. When I saw that other people painted themselves as doctors or lawyers, I...