DSA Publications

This section presents our formally-published books and industry reports.

Please be sure to check the DSA Blog for our latest articles, new developments and running commentary on all things target-marketing.

And... for further information about these or other topics, please Contact Us

Digital Marketing Trends and Practices Report

Following in the tradition of the Direct Marketing Association’s series of surveys on direct marketing practices, what follows is a report on the inaugural survey of Digital Marketing Trends and Practices. This survey was addressed to “end-use” direct marketers to avoid “buzz and hype” and get a sense of what marketing organizations are actually doing and where they see themselves going next.

The questions were designed to elicit insight into the use of both digital and traditional media to implement customer and prospecting contact strategies. . . both as they are practiced today, and as they are likely to evolve over the next few years. More simply put, the objective of the survey was to discover just what direct marketing companies actually do with regard to many everyday issues and evolving opportunities — online/web channels, email, social media, mobile advertising, direct mail, catalog, telemarketing, print, TV, etc.

Although digital marketing is in many ways the extension of traditional direct marketing processes to new media, digital marketing practioners often view the role of their marketing differently, with a greater emphasis on brand building and multistep sales processes. In this way, digital marketing has come a long way from its early years, when marketers coming from catalogs and the retail store world viewed the Internet as just another channel to interact and transact with their customers with online metrics mirroring offline ones.

These days, marketers judge the success of their online marketing less on revenue or cost per view, and more on how effective their messages are at generating clicks and traffic. Simply stated, our findings indicate Internet marketers tend to evaluate less on revenue metrics. With marketing budgeting continuing to shift to digital channels, this trend will continue to deepen.

The survey was intended to “take a pulse” on digital and traditional marketing methods as they are implemented today. Our findings essentially reflect the way different direct marketing companies are transitioning to the digital world and coping with multimedia as they practice marketing. As such, our findings are helpful benchmarks for these types of companies. And in addition to benchmarking, we have discovered a number of trends that give insight into future directions.

PRACTICES... BEST OR OTHERWISE
This survey, as with the previous series, is not a “best” practices study in the usual sense, as the results you will see are not necessarily case studies of what “leading edge” companies are doing or attempting to do — or what consultants (including us) are telling them to do. The study was designed with the intention of identifying and understanding what practices are actually being used — “best” or otherwise.

Having said that, it appears that, while all marketing groups are experimenting and evolving, organizations that grew out of traditional direct marketing are having issues with how to integrate marketing efforts across channels, while new media marketers seem to not understand or even be aware of the potential in other types of media. It also appears that while there is an increase in usage of digital media, the level and rate of adoption is not as high as many industry commentators would have us believe.

More Info At The DMA BOOKSTORE...

Customer Prospecting and Retention Report

Developed in collaboration with David Shepard Associates, the DMA Customer Prospecting and Retention Report is the updated second edition of ground-breaking research designed to provide critical insights into current practices on how to reach, convert, and retain customers in a multichannel environment.

With over 250 B-to-B and B-to-C companies participating, this report will help you identify whether you’re ahead of the curve or if you’ve been left behind in the dust.

Learn what direct marketing companies are actually doing today and how they manage key areas like: Customer acquisition Customer promotion and retention Budgeting What are your competitors up to? All the major industry segments are broken out by type and size of firm so you’ll be able to determine how your company compares in terms of modern direct marketing practices. The DMA Customer Prospecting and Retention Report will help you decide which practices you want to explore, find out what’s working for your competition, and avoid costly mistakes!

Establishing budgets, selecting names for promotion, tracking and measuring ROI, data mining and modeling, databases, testing, segmentation, lifetime value, loyalty and rewards programs — these are topics that are especially crucial to direct marketers.

To discover what direct marketers are really doing in regard to these specific areas, respondents were asked to answer a survey containing approximately 50 questions. In this Executive Summary we highlight the key findings. The findings are divided into the following major sections:

Budgeting & Decision-Making
New Customer Acquisition
Customer Promotion and Retention
Media Channels & Marketing Issues
Database Management
Database Technology & Data Evaluation/Analysis Tools

Compare your organization against all major segments of the direct marketing industry on key measures like: Campaign management, Contact strategy, Customer optimization, Database marketing, Testing, And more…

Plus, throughout the entire report you will find additional commentary on the survey results. Industry veteran and expert, David Shepard, provides key insights behind the survey results through his analytical commentary, making the results easier to digest and apply to your current prospecting and retention campaigns.

Special feature: Segmentation Analysis
Respondents to this study were segmented according to their use of advanced marketing tools such as data mining, predictive modeling, segmentation, use of customer segment managers, etc. This special segmentation analysis reveals some of the characteristics of the 25% of direct marketers who can be described as having adopted the most sophisticated marketing practices. Use this new data to benchmark your company and discover ways to continue improving your current practices.

More Info At The DMA BOOKSTORE...

The New Direct Marketing

The industry's standard reference on Database Marketing strategies, analytics and marketing database systems. The New Direct Marketing is about more than just using a marketing database to selectively target offers to customers and prospects; it allows marketers to continually "close the loop" and incorporate new information and results back into the database to drive next steps. Marketers record each response in the database so they can develop future strategies and executions using the collective results of previous efforts. This means companies can allocate marketing resources based on current, up-to-date results that include a comprehensive performance history for each customer.

That is why we have written this book. Our purpose is not to add to what has already been written regarding the changing marketplace of the database marketing and customer relationship marketing evolution, but to provide a practical guide on how to profitably use dataabase technology, advanced analytical and data mining methods, and new, innovative direct and database marketing methods to become smarter, more efficient, and more effective marketers. As such, it is a handbook for direct marketing companies and users of direct marketing methods across all channels.

The new direct marketing is an information-driven marketing process, made possible by database technology, sources of consumer data, statistical analysis methods and customizable customer communication channels that enable marketers to develop, test, implement, measure, and appropriately modify customized marketing programs and strategies. To implement the new direct marketing you need to know how to:

Identify and gather relevant data about customers and prospects.
Use database technology to transform raw data into powerful and accessiible marketing information.
Apply statistical techniques to customer and prospect databases to anaalyze behavior, isolate relatively homogeneous market segments, and scon and rank individuals in terms of their probability of behaving in a variety of predictable ways (responding, buying, returning, paying, staying or leaving, and so on).
Evaluate the economics of gathering, manipulating, and analyzing data and capitalize on the economics of developing and implementing dataadriven marketing programs.
Creatively act on the marketing opportunities that emerge from these processes to develop individual customer relationships and to build business.

Consequently, marketers are able to develop highly targeted customer acquisition, customer development and customer retention programs and, more importantly, profitably customize the sequence and flow of marketing communications. Using the new direct marketing, leading catalogers have found that they can optimally regulate the number of times they promote to a customer. By selectively targeting, they can also customize which version of the promotion a customer receives, the complete set of offers & products or a smaller more-focused promotion. As a result they have been able to help offset continually rising costs and maximize profits.

Information Can Drive New Programs and Fuel New Revenue Sources... the new direct marketing can help everyone win. Consumers win because they can conveniently choose which products they want to know more about. The manufacturers win because they can receive qualified leads. Online merchants, retailers and catalogers win because they drive revenue, understand each customer better and strentghen customer relationships.

More Info At AMAZON.COM...