It Takes Strong Companies to Apply the Direct Marketing Discipline Effectively

Written By Ted Grigg

Some of my clients understand fully what direct marketing can do for them. But they need help in assessing why their programs are not performing at the levels they should.

When investigating the barriers to their success, I find that their own staffs and the company itself are often the culprits. It has to do with what Peter Drucker said about today’s knowledge workers. They are no longer just employees, but private contractors.

“They respond best to the standards of excellence associated with their expertise rather than the discipline imposed by traditional management practices.”

From the Definitive Drucker by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim

Many employees in these organizations are more focused on following the corporate line than achieving direct marketing goals. Such individuals do not think creatively abandoning the concerns of their customers for what they perceive as corporate protocol. They are closed to new ideas and more effective ways of achieving the sales goals for fear of upsetting the corporate environment.

This is often not the employees’ doing, but rather the old ideas about employee loyalty that are reinforced daily by the corporate machine.

The company must recognize the reversal of power from the organization to the individual. Leaders need to leverage the employees’ desire for excellence within their expertise and encourage it.

Assuring direct marketing success requires an environment where employees are respected for their skills. They are given clear guidance on their contribution to the organization’s goals. Peter Drucker made a daring statement during an interview with the “Harvard Business Review“ in February, 2002 in an article entitled “They’re Not Employees, They’re people.”

“In a traditional workforce, the worker serves the system; in a knowledge-based or service-based workforce, the system must serve the worker.”

I would take this a step further. Both the workforce and the system must serve the customer.

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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