Alberta Business Marketing

Rosalie McGovern created a lot of buzz in a post last year about the evolution of Direct Marketing and new definition for it, which was developed by CMA’s Direct Marketing Council with input from the broader marketing community.

Direct Marketing is the use of media to directly engage targeted audiences to drive profitable business results that can be tracked, recorded, analyzed and stored for future retrieval and use.

Marketers needed an updated framework for understanding a changing industry, particularly with the increased use and effectiveness of online and digital media, a shift toward insights based marketing as well as changes in consumer preferences and access to information.

To accompany this new framework, CMA’s DM Council put together a series of best practice documents (13) that cover the most common channels and media found in a comprehensive marketing plan. These documents are concise and include only the most important learnings; the tried tested and true direct marketing practices, written by DM subject matter experts.

The best practices are organized into three sections:
1. The Basics (recently published on the CMA website) – covers Direct Marketing Analytics, Offers, Branding from a Direct Marketing perspective, Creative, and Privacy Management.

2. Media and Channels - focuses on both traditional and emerging DM channels: Email Marketing, Direct Mail, DR Media, and SEM.

3. Improving Effectiveness - helps direct marketers leverage the basics to their greatest effect with complimentary tactics like Contests, Word of Mouth Marketing, Community Involvement and Cross-selling.

The DM Council has brought these practices together in a “Direct Marketing Digest”. Our target audience? Those direct marketers early in their career.

The complete DM Digest will be distributed to all attendees at CMA's Direct Marketing Conference September 21 in Toronto. Come and get yours and/or pass it on to a junior on your team.

Martha Turner

Tags: Analytics/Measurement, Digital, Direct Marketing, Strategy
Posted in Uncategorized | | Comments Off

As a leader of direct and digital marketing professionals, I have come to the realization that there is a rapid convergence of these two worlds resulting in a new face among direct marketing professionals.

Today’s strategic marketing plans necessitate cross-channel integration that go beyond the traditional channels. Our marketing plans include digital marketing tactics like SEM and social network marketing to help us achieve the end goals of consumer brand awareness, consideration, purchase, retention and loyalty.

The traditional skill sets of a direct marketer, while highly data driven and analytical, is no longer sufficient. Similarly, web marketers need to leverage the highly valuable skills and discipline that direct marketers bring to the table in order to ensure marketing plans are trackable, measurable and ultimately accountable to the program’s end goals and objectives.
This often makes recruitment exercises challenging whereby I find myself seeking marketing candidates who not only have a firm grasp on the ‘science’ of direct marketing (not an easy find) but can contextualize their application to emerging digital marketing technologies and platforms (an even harder find).

Would love to hear others’ views on the changing face of the direct marketer.

Martha Turner, AVP Marketing Services and Campaign Management, Aviva Canada & member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

Tags: Direct Marketing
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

In my current role at a home and auto insurance company, we sell our products exclusively through independent brokers. That said, we are keenly interested in providing value add services to our broker partners to ensure they are both growing and retaining the right customers.

Like many businesses today, brokerages know they need to have an online presence but often lack the technical know-how. As a result, our marketing department has put together a series of marketing best practices for our brokerages to help them get started. To compliment Jim Estill’s blog post here late last month, SEO - Search Engine Optimization Basics , I thought I would share one such piece that attempts to demystify Search Engine Marketing. In our Introduction to Search Engine Marketing we tried to simplify SEM and provide some tangible tips for businesses trying to get started in the SEM space.

What SEM strategies and tactics have worked for your business, and which have not?

Martha Turner, AVP Marketing Services and Campaign Management, Aviva Canada Inc.
& member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

Tags: Digital, technology
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off