Suppliers to agencies, here's a disturbing question for you. When your agency contracts with outside suppliers, will the agency pay your bill if their client does not pay? The agency... right? Wrong.

The advent of the internet phenomenon has attracted many new players to the direct marketing space. This is welcome news to professional direct marketers. But there is one area that continues to frustrate us.

In the so called "good old days", the big communication challenge for direct marketers was to translate marketing objectives to database mainframe programmers.

Note the terrible letter below I just received from a local car dealer. (If you are a car dealer or car salesman, please stop abusing direct response advertising polluting direct mail with double meanings and outright lies.)

o let's agree up front that a "lead" is not a suspect, a telephone list of companies in a certain industry or any person who has not raised his hand and said: "I'm interested, tell me more.”

There are essentially three ways marketers will respond to today's quickly evolving marketing environment. The first type responds quickly on impulse,

You would think that marketers and advertisers would understand the breadth and depth of the direct marketing strategy after about 50 years of steady progress. Sadly, they do not.

If there is one sales issue that stumps most individuals responsible for new business, it is the prospect who presents an ill defined problem and has little or no budget.

The basic question you and the CFO must agree to is how much the average sale is worth to you and how much the company is willing to pay for a new contract or sale.