ASTECH i-News December 2005 Data-Driven Marketing Automation for Media Professionals
Today's Quote:
"Dramatic growth in direct marketing, an industry that now accounts for more than 50 percent of all advertising expenditures, offers measurability that is unparalleled in the marketing world. In fact, because of the measurability of direct response vehicles, we know that marketers in 2004 spent $187 billion to generate $2.2 trillion in sales. That’s a ROMI of $11 for every $1 spent. Direct marketing offers tremendous flexibility to market across multiple channels in concert, thereby maximizing the effectiveness of each single medium. Because direct marketing allows organizations to leverage data to understand their customers’ needs and speak directly to them, it is prompting a revolution in the way organizations relate to their customers."
John A. Greco, Jr., President & CEO, The Direct Marketing Association
> Highlights
> MediaNews Makes Move to Marketing Automation
MediaNews Group (MNG) has contracted with ASTECH InterMedia to implement ASTECH’s MAAX™ Solution Suite, a data-driven marketing automation system employed by nearly 50 newspapers in North America. EVP/COO Gerald Grilly believes MAAX will provide MNG with a level of sophistication that is becoming increasingly essential in today’s competitive media environment.
"This industry is facing challenges from every direction," says Grilly. "We believe we can turn these challenges into opportunities by learning more about our customers – and our customers’ customers. Our investment with ASTECH is an investment in our future. We anticipate meaningful improvements in circulation marketing productivity resulting from intelligent, integrated sales initiatives. And an enhanced capability to serve the target marketing needs of our advertisers will drive our corporate objective of revenue diversification and enhancement."
For the full release, click here.
> Circulation Summit Breaks New Ground
"It’s now or never."
"We need to put up or shut up."
"It’s time to fish or cut bait."
Choose your cliché. (Personally, we prefer "ShiFt or get off the pot")
The bottom line is this…Our industry is in a time of crisis. The nature of this crisis has been the subject of innumerable meetings, articles and presentations. We’ve talked around systemic changes to circulation marketing for quite some time, but that change has been incremental. The slide in the industry’s circulation has not. The time is NOW to stop talking and start acting.
The sixth edition of the INMA’s Circulation Summit is not just about change – it is about the future. It is about the need to reconcile short-term performance requirements with long-term viability. It is about making the investments essential to growth. It is about sharing process and product innovations from within the industry and without. It is about NOW.
As you will see from the prestigious list of speakers and their respective sessions, this is intended to be more than just another discussion of third-party sales, cost per order comparisons and ABC reporting standards. It will be a seminal event designed to turn the discussion of the industry’s future from "managed decline" to "unlimited opportunity."
In other words, you need to be there. For more information, go to: http://www.inma.org/2006-circsummit.cfm
> Survey Shows Promising Future for Direct Marketing
Direct Magazine’s annual survey of its readers suggests that while spending growth on direct marketing will be significant in 2006, the following year will be even better. Why? Because direct marketers will continue to benefit from improved targeting, analytics and customer intelligence.
Marketers are increasingly held accountable for demonstrating a positive ROI on their marketing investments. The survey indicates that planned spending continues to shift from mass to targeted marketing where such metrics can be more readily quantified.
"Consumers are paying more attention to things that are tailored to their likes and dislikes, hence the decline in newspaper advertising and broadcast TV," says Don McKenzie, CEO of DM-focused investment banking firm Petsky Prunier LLC.
Veronis Suhler Stevenson concurs, pegging direct marketing’s compound annual growth between 2005 and 2009 at 6% per year, compared with 4.3% for broadcast television, 4.9% for consumer promotion and 2.8% for newspapers.
Our take: Newspaper companies are getting the message. Many have aggressively invested in direct marketing capabilities to maintain or grow their overall share of advertising expenditures. ASTECH has long maintained that newspapers own a significant competitive advantage in their efforts to grow direct marketing operations. This advantage stems from their unique ability to integrate direct marketing initiatives with newspaper advertising. The key to leveraging this advantage is investing in the same technologies that facilitate the improved targeting, analytics and customer intelligence noted above. Companies like the Seattle Times, Arizona Republic, Houston Chronicle and Denver Newspaper Agency are proving that there are substantial rewards for those willing to make those investments.
> Is Mobile Marketing the Next Medium to Eat at Ad Share?
Although consultancy Deloitte & Touche is predicting an estimated 2 billion wireless users by year-end, most consumers still use mobile technology largely for simple voice calls. According to analyst Noah Elkin of eMarketer, those that use such features as text messaging, e-mail and content downloads on their handsets are in the minority. For now at least, "it is difficult to imagine wireless as a channel that millions will tune into."
Niki Scevak of Jupiter Research concurs, suggesting that the cell phone is "wonderful response mechanism" but that its personal nature "makes it a very poor delivery mechanism for advertising." Clearly, there are limits to how much information can be conveyed in a basic text message.
Some of those limitations, however, will disappear as bandwidth and handset limitations ease over time. Audio and video streams will become more viable. Certainly, the day will come when mobile marketing will become a more effective means of customer marketing, but that day is still a ways off.
Our take: Wireless technology represents another channel – along with print, direct mail, e-mail, web, Podcasting, etc. – for newspaper marketers to integrate in serving the needs of customers, readers and advertisers. Despite the likelihood that adoption will be slow in coming, newspaper companies should lead the way in embracing mobile marketing as a useful component of a multi-channel communications strategy.
FYI…Mark Challinor, managing director of Buzz Mobile Marketing and a leading authority on the use of mobile technology in the publishing industry, will be a featured speaker at the INMA Circulation Summit.
>The Six Steps to Keeping Pace with the Customer Experience
According to Mike Fasula, the chief marketing officer for Sony Electronics, "The customer experience is continually moving." Sony’s process for keeping pace comprises six steps:
Our take: Like Sony, most newspaper brands represent quality and, usually, integrity. This perception creates opportunities to interact with customers to learn more about how they spend their money and free time…and, subsequently, to anticipate their needs. Use these opportunities, and invest in the marketing technology that will allow you to leverage this information to the benefit of your readers and advertisers.
> MAAX™ Users Group Meeting: March 27-28, Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas
With 50 newspapers now using MAAX to propel their data-driven subscriber marketing and targeted advertising initiatives, the 2006 MAAX Users Group meeting will be jammed wall-to-wall with case studies, success stories and client recommendations. Attendees will hear specifically how MAAX is driving segmentation schemes that improve acquisition and retention productivity, how MAAX is contributing to increases in analytical, shared and solo mail revenue, and much, much more. Among the forward-looking clients expected to participate are the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Denver Newspaper Agency, Seattle Times, Sacramento Bee, San Diego Union-Tribune, Columbus Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Arizona Republic, The Globe and Mail, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Duluth News Tribune and several MediaNews Group companies.
Monday and Tuesday (March 27-28) will be largely dedicated to sharing specific business applications and how MAAX is supporting them. On Wednesday morning, ASTECH consultants will offer optional specialized training sessions in several enhanced functions including maaxCAMPAIGNER, maaxREPORTER, maaxCRM and maaxPROFILER.
As always, the MAAX Users Group meeting is free of charge to clients. There will be a nominal fee for the training sessions for those who wish to participate.
For more information, contact Tom Ratkovich at ter@astech-intermedia.com or 303.296.9966.
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i-News is brought to you by ASTECH InterMedia, the leading provider of data-driven, revenue-focused marketing automation solutions to the publishing industry. If you like what you read here, we invite you to learn more about our company at www.astech-intermedia.com!
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