Marketing

2005 Retail Outlook Solid, Not Stellar

| Barbara Arnn

The Ernst & Young 2005 Retail and Consumer Products Industry Forecast is out, promising a fairly healthy year for retailers on the one hand, and a certain amount of deflation for manufacturers. Steady but not spectacular growth in the economy

Having His Say: Online vs. On-Demand Marketing Databases

| John Barth

No matter how you maintain your customer history, you certainly should have faster and smarter access to it.

Reports that once took six months to develop are routinely delivered in a month or less these days. As a result, marketing strategies have changed considerably as well. Marketers are much more targeted with their offers and the timing of them.

Today we use terms such as

Four Tips for Profitable Multichannel Prospecting

| MCM staff

We all know that it’s less expensive to keep a customer than to find a new one. But to grow a business, prospecting is arguably as important as retention.

To help you find new customers profitably, Mark Traverso, vice president of list management, new business, and e-commerce at Pompano Beach, FL-based Lighthouse List Co., and Michele Volpe, vice president for Novato, CA-based list firm Media Source Solutions, offer some suggestions:

Polish Your Data Dictionary

| MCM staff

As the saying goes, Cleanliness is next to godliness. And in direct marketing, data cleanliness leads to improved profitability. But because data hygiene is about as exciting as, well, dental hygiene, too many marketers give it only cursory attention.

And that, says Brent Bissell, president of Minneapolis-based consultancy Direct Target One, is a costly oversight. Poor hygiene results in an inconsistent data dictionary

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