DM Specialists are in Danger of Loosing Their 360% View

Written By Ted Grigg

There is a tendency for non-direct marketers to break out online marketing as something other than a new medium made to order for professional direct marketers. They treat it as a new business genre that highly experienced direct marketers cannot support or contribute to in some significant way.

Another inappropriate segmentation in my mind is that CRM professionals are somehow not direct marketing professionals who happen to specialize in a specific activity. Knowing several CRM practitioners, I do not believe that they view their chosen area of specialization as an industry that is separate from direct marketing. But business leaders often structure it that way within their companies.

These niche segmentation schemes hurt the future of all direct marketers because they artificially limit the scope of the discipline. It just reinforces the perception that direct marketing consists of a set of tactics rather than an over arching strategy.

This professional segmentation has already evolved in the medical and legal fields. Some in those professions suggest that this overspecialization encourages surgeons to cut and the Internist to medicate for the same problem. As with all specialists, they recommend what they know and not necessarily the best solution.

I don’t know about you, but I think there exists an important role for the referring physician to look at the problem holistically in order to refer to the specialists he or she believes will solve the medical problem with a balanced perspective.

If you are a CRM specialist, would you consider yourself a weak customer acquisition strategist? If you have a history of beating controls in the direct mail arena, would you comfortably tackle a DRTV control? The list goes on.

We often talk of the lack of industry cross-pollenization. What about the need to take specialties out of their silos to make them accounting for results of multi-channel marketing efforts?

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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