If you plan and evaluate direct marketing efforts, then you know the challenge of pulling together the essential information for your creative assignment.

I have two long time friends. They are both CMO types with tremendous direct marketing backgrounds. And neither seem to be able to land jobs that make sense anymore.

The answer is that many of my clients still struggle year after year with improperly integrated databases following mergers and acquisitions. Or in some cases, the name file does not automatically attach purchase or inquiry information at the record level.

This question came up when the editor for Inside Direct Mail contacted me for an interview related to offers in direct mail. I knew that he was contacting a number of other direct marketers in the US. So I was interested to see what he came up with.

Have you noticed how many surveys seem to skirt around the really meaningful questions? When they ask for your experience with a recent purchase,

They may be smart, driven and even successful at what they do. But if they are genetically right brain dominant and leading the company's marketing efforts, they do not have what it takes to succeed using direct response strategies.

Robert Boyar, CMO of LW Brand design conducted a “quickie ranking” of six important marketing variables among a select group of marketing professionals

This list applies partially to all direct response media, but I developed it primarily for direct mail development since this remains the core medium for many direct marketers.

In a recent post entitled "2008 Email Design Guidelines" Matthew Patterson wrote a list of "quick and Dirty Guidelines" in his blog that I have seen many times before: