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DM Data Management, 1998 – 2008: A Snapshot
By Graham Arrowsmith
1998? I remember it well. Bill Clinton finally admitted to playing hide-the-cigar with a certain chubby White House intern; to the dismay of millions, Seinfeld ended; and a little blue pill called Viagra grabbed more headlines than the Second Coming.
For the DM industry, however, I recall ’98 as being something of a minor watershed as there was a growing sense of urgency in some quarters that direct mail here would go the way of the States and experience falling response rates. Not because of online (the digital onslaught wasn’t yet sounding so much as an echo out there in cyberspace), but because of marketers’ continued and relentless carpet bombing of the entire population.
At the time, the self-styled media leaders of direct mail were grappling with an industry slavishly following the Oscar Wilde mantra , ‘nothing succeeds like excess’. Yet shimmering on the horizon was an alternate vision for DM whereby it would act as the ultimate Infomediary - carefully capturing data and methodically compiling detailed consumer profiles by which marketing campaigns could be better targeted.
Was this a utopian dream? It was certainly scoffed at by many a Nineties nay-sayer. But with the medium’s long-term sustainability even then under threat from the gross imbalance between the amount of personal and business post pouring through letterboxes (am I the only one nostalgic for the time when one might occasionally expect to receive a hand written letter?), consumer attitudes to DM were on the turn.
And not necessarily for the better.
With e-mail and texting eroding DM’s hitherto exclusive preserves - rapid response and one-to-one communication – an alternate ending was in sight for a DM Infomediary capable of three strategic market interventions:
(1) as a trusted third party, it would align data captured from rewarded consumers with marketers ready at the right time with the right offer;
(2) optimised receipt patterns could be created through better DM scheduling to produce a more ‘balanced’ B2C doormat; and
(3) transforming the medium into a vehicle for considered and trusted feedback between individual and brand.
Fast forward to the present and it is arguable that the changes that have occurred over the course of the past decade are more the result of market forces than the silent hand of any altruistic Infomediary. Big brands have entered the medium in far larger numbers than in the Nineties, so there is much to celebrate. But in contrast to days of yore, offline budgets are steadily migrating to online, with digital expenditure now accounting for 15.6 per cent of total annual UK advertising expenditure of £19.4 billion against DM’s declining 11.2 per cent (all figures courtesy of the Advertising Association).
By Graham Arrowsmith
1998? I remember it well. Bill Clinton finally admitted to playing hide-the-cigar with a certain chubby White House intern; to the dismay of millions, Seinfeld ended; and a little blue pill called Viagra grabbed more headlines than the Second Coming.
For the DM industry, however, I recall ’98 as being something of a minor watershed as there was a growing sense of urgency in some quarters that direct mail here would go the way of the States and experience falling response rates. Not because of online (the digital onslaught wasn’t yet sounding so much as an echo out there in cyberspace), but because of marketers’ continued and relentless carpet bombing of the entire population.
At the time, the self-styled media leaders of direct mail were grappling with an industry slavishly following the Oscar Wilde mantra , ‘nothing succeeds like excess’. Yet shimmering on the horizon was an alternate vision for DM whereby it would act as the ultimate Infomediary - carefully capturing data and methodically compiling detailed consumer profiles by which marketing campaigns could be better targeted.
Was this a utopian dream? It was certainly scoffed at by many a Nineties nay-sayer. But with the medium’s long-term sustainability even then under threat from the gross imbalance between the amount of personal and business post pouring through letterboxes (am I the only one nostalgic for the time when one might occasionally expect to receive a hand written letter?), consumer attitudes to DM were on the turn.
And not necessarily for the better.
With e-mail and texting eroding DM’s hitherto exclusive preserves - rapid response and one-to-one communication – an alternate ending was in sight for a DM Infomediary capable of three strategic market interventions:
(1) as a trusted third party, it would align data captured from rewarded consumers with marketers ready at the right time with the right offer;
(2) optimised receipt patterns could be created through better DM scheduling to produce a more ‘balanced’ B2C doormat; and
(3) transforming the medium into a vehicle for considered and trusted feedback between individual and brand.
Fast forward to the present and it is arguable that the changes that have occurred over the course of the past decade are more the result of market forces than the silent hand of any altruistic Infomediary. Big brands have entered the medium in far larger numbers than in the Nineties, so there is much to celebrate. But in contrast to days of yore, offline budgets are steadily migrating to online, with digital expenditure now accounting for 15.6 per cent of total annual UK advertising expenditure of £19.4 billion against DM’s declining 11.2 per cent (all figures courtesy of the Advertising Association).
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