To profitably grow a business, you need to invest the right amount in prospecting. But what is that right amount? It varies by company based on several factors including sales goals, profitability targets, short- and long-term strategic plans, and how customer lifetime value (LTV) compares with acquisition costs.
Some thoughts and reflections on insert marketing
As we look into the future of loyalty-marketing innovation, three major
trends will emerge. In fact, some leading-edge companies are already taking advantage of these concepts and tactics.
After divesting most of its European businesses earlier this year, Greenwich, CT-based multichannel marketer Blyth, the parent company of gifts cataloger Miles Kimball, is restructuring into direct selling and multichannel businesses.
Implementing a
Recent advances in warehouse management systems (WMS) and time and attendance (T&A) systems provide many benefits in inventory control, distribution operations, and personnel administration. They also provide an opportunity to obtain files that you can use to comply with certain labor management requirements. But though labor management is a key means of cutting costs and improving service, it is usually given a low priority during implementation of WMS and T&A systems.
Most b-to-b marketers appear to spend 90%-95% of their budget on image, awareness, and sales lead generation programs, and only 5%-10% on database marketing. I think this budgeting approach is dead wrong.
When the Web was introduced years ago, direct marketers were faced with the issue of tracking which channel their customers were coming from
Jim Coogan, president of Santa Fe, NM-based consultancy Catalog Marketing Economics, says that it is worthwhile to pay for those extra selection charges to get the most targeted names available from rental lists. After all, the incremental response from taking the best-of-the-best names from a rental list will pay the extra costs of the selects.