David Vogel

My wife recently had a scary run in with a stalker: the website of a local pharmacy.

It started innocently enough. She was in the process of creating a first-time account on the site when she was prompted to provide some additional information. Pretty standard procedure, except that the site pre-populated the form fields with data that, while dated, was eerily accurate.

Wait a second, why would a site she’d never used before know her childhood phone number, her address from college, and the name of one of her past roommates?

How did they get all that information, and why were they using it?

With the proliferation of social media use, dozens of companies like RapLeaf and Spokeo are busy compiling an amazing amount of data about each of us. They do this by tying public record data (such as your name and address) to information pulled from...

Yesterday, I was part of a packed house to hear Lawrence Kimmel, CEO of the Direct Marketing Association, discuss new marketing trends for 2011 and beyond. His analysis of the future is as scary as it is exciting, because it will require that we as marketers analyze the way we currently do things, and evolve to match the new realities of our economy, global market, and technology.

Lawrence Kimmel, CEO of the Direct Marketing Association

One particularly pointed comment Kimmel made was that as a whole, marketers have devolved from affecting the “Four P’s” (Produce, Price,...

As 2010 comes to a close, it’s time to take another look at the ten most popular and important posts on blog.mailprint.com during this past year. And the drum roll please…

Is Your Direct Marketing Positively Impacting Your Customer Life Cycle?

Our overall #1 most viewed article focuses on helping readers define the customer life cycle of their organization, and how they can align their direct marketing strategy to their customer lifecycle for maximum results.

Key Quote: “While everyone knows that it costs 6-10 times more to acquire a new customer than to maintain a loyal customer, most direct marketing is heavily weighted toward lead generation…”

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Close doesn’t count in database quality. The accuracy of your data can make or break your marketing budget.

This guest post provided by Erin Haselkorn, Vertical Marketing Specialist, Experian QAS.

Data quality is a top concern for many organizations, as it affects business operations from customer management to operational efficiency. With this in mind, Experian QAS took on a research project in August to find out current data perceptions, cleansing practices, and accuracy levels. The survey included 300 respondents in the U.S. in the retail, finance and insurance sector.

The survey revealed some interesting statistics:

• While 96.2 percent of organizations view data accuracy as an essential issue, nearly one-third of them don’t enforce it.
• More than half of the respondents claim that at...