Marketing Improvement

The marketing consultancy Marketing Improvement (MI) issued its own

Guide to Beating the Recession, which suggests that marketers address the markets and customers that it identifies as being recession proof (professional services, government departments, the UK tourist industry and the rich,

for example), that they understand what their business customers are going through and which industries their consumer customers work in, and obtain more information on customers than perhaps their existing customer relationship management (CRM) systems provide. MI claims that this recession is like no other and CRM systems may not be providing the right kind of information, as they take too long to reconfigure in this fast-changing economic climate. Instead, MI urges marketers to collect information via their websites, to move to e-mail marketing and to be flexible.

MI has given Key Note permission to reproduce its Key Trends in 2009, which include the following:

`Monetising Your Data'

Companies spend a fortune buying data and spend virtually nothing on looking after the data they have. It is certain that they put money into incredibly expensive CRM systems, or have done so, but they don't actually look after them, they just sit uncared for and are eventually unused because they are too old and too inaccurate. This is changing as companies now increasingly recognise their true value.

`The Internet Isn't Working'

There was a time when a few pounds spent with Google Adwords and a few

well-placed banner advertisements would set a new e-commerce business up and running; not any longer. Now you have to use offline media to get people to go to your online presence. Expect to see ever more direct marketing sending people to the web. Even eBay is now using poster advertisements, for example.

`Back to Basics'

Many companies have spent fortunes on predictive models and variables from a wide range of vendors. However, now more and more are recognising that the marginal gains these provide are not worth the cost. Worse, predictive models do not work well in a recession because they are based on the previous non-recessionary behaviour. By the time the models get fixed,

the recession will be over. What matters more is getting the basics right

-- good clean, consistent data are the key.

Considering these three trends together, it is expected that direct marketing spend will increase as outbound volumes climb. However, because budgets are under huge pressure, certain areas of the industry are going to face substantial pricing issues -- these include data, data variables and predictive modelling. At the same time, budgets will be released from online and into direct marketing as online effectiveness wanes still further. 2009 will see a return to the basics.

Source: Marketing Improvement, Key Trends in 2009,

www.marketingimprovement.com.

Direct Digital

According to Marketing Direct magazine's The List Report, published in February 2009, the market for high-volume consumer data for cold calling has declined, with buyers such as Capital One moving their customer acquisition activities online. This move, announced in January