Abandon the Past to Embrace the New

Written By Ted Grigg

One of my favorite business thinkers, Peter Drucker believed that to lead into the future, you must first abandon the past. He essentially defined this skill as “abandonment.”

So I was wondering if there is something to this concept that we can apply to marketing, and in particular to the direct marketing strategy.

Must we indeed abandon years of testing and the accumulated knowledge of customer behavior for a different set of rules? Or is it more about correctly interpreting past learning and translating the information as a set of undying principles.

People are still driven by the same wants and needs. They desire security. They want to be loved. They want to avoid loss.

As Solomon says,
What has been will be again,
What has been done will be done again;
There is nothing new under the sun.

Some things never change. So what is it that we should abandon in order to embrace the new? Multichannel marketing was advocated and practiced by professional direct marketers years before the term was invented. In fact, the analytics proving the value of Multichannel marketing when correctly implemented was accepted as irrefutable many years ago. We used to call this multimedia. So the only change is the number of available media channels and the term itself.

CRM or customer relationship marketing used to be called database marketing. The software is more powerful than ever. But database marketers were talking about this over 20 years ago. And just as companies then didn’t really know how to make that work well continues as a significant problem for most companies today. The promise is there, but the devil is in the details. In fact, I believe the devil is in the genes --- that is, the corporate genetic structure that cannot seem to practice true CRM.

The list goes on. It is in the terminology that I see the greatest changes and not in the fundamental strategies. Selling people on your services and products one at a time still drives direct marketing.

What changes have you seen in the last several years that have made past strategies obsolete? What are areas of thought we need to abandon to embrace the future?

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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