NextMark

Harold Pratt Beats the Economy with NextMark and MIN

2009-11-12T08:17:11-05:00

Harold Pratt, president of Pratt Direct Marketing, knows how to survive and thrive in a down economy. He’s discovered how to do more with less by exploiting NextMark and mIn. According to "Meet the Broker: Harold Pratt":

"I would say you can do a lot more," he says. "You can handle a lot more business with one or two people than you could back then and list searching is a lot easier today, using tools like NextMark and MIN than in the olden days of having to leaf through an SRDS (Standard Rate and Data Systems) directory."

Mr. Pratt knows that an inefficient back room operation will steal time and money from you every day. He’s implemented tools that enable him to spend more time delivering valuable insights and advice to clients and less time on “grunt work.” Now that’s smart business!

Installing the Mailing Lists Search Tool

2009-11-11T16:26:40-05:00

#1 Add the mailing lists search tool to your web site or blog:

To add the mailing lists search tool to your web site and provide your visitors with access to over 60,000 mailing lists, just copy and paste the following code into the HTML document where you want the search tool to appear:

<form method="post" action="http://lists.nextmark.com/market?page=order/online/search_results"> <input type="hidden" name="selection" value="0"> <input type="hidden" name="searchMode" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="prevSearchMode" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="listStatus" value="ACTV"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top;"></td> <td style="background-image: url(http://www.nextmark.com/graphics/search-back.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 30px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; margin: 0px; vertical-align: middle;"> <select name="listType" class="searchinput"> <option value="ALL" selected>All Mailing Lists <option value="POSTL">Postal Lists <option value="EMAIL">Email Lists <option value="TELPHN">Telemarketing Lists <option value="INSERT">Package Inserts <option value="STUFFR">Statement Stuffers </select> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top;"></td> <td style="background-image: url(http://www.nextmark.com/graphics/search-back.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 30px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; margin: 0px; vertical-align: middle;"> <input type="text" size="20" name="searchText" class="searchinput" title="Mailing List Search Keywords"> </td> <td> <input type="image" name="search" src="http://www.nextmark.com/graphics/go.gif" title="Search for Mailing Lists"> </td> </tr> </table> </form ><P>This free <A href="http://lists.nextmark.com/">mailing lists search tool</A> is powered by <A href="http://www.nextmark.com/">NextMark</A>.<br><br></P>

#2 Give it a test drive.

Enter the keywords for your mailing lists search. The tool should look like this on your web page or blog:

This free mailing lists search tool is powered by NextMark.

#3 Watch the YouTube video tutorial on mailing lists:

By installing the mailing lists search tool, you agree to the terms and conditions of use.

Google bets on mobile with $750 mm AdMob acquisition

2009-11-10T09:45:15-05:00

Google's $750 mm acquisition of AdMob is their 3rd biggest behind Doubleclick and YouTube. AdMob, the mobile ad platform that has been especially popular on the iPhone, has certainly done a lot of things right in its first 3 years of operation with revenue approaching $100 million. Google thinks this can be a lot bigger:

"Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That's what has us excited about this deal."

The trend is clear. This deal shouts the importance of the mobile advertising channel. What can we learn from this? What should we do to capitalize on this trend?

5 tweets from the tower of 'babble'

2009-11-02T16:47:31-05:00

Has Twitter become the tower of 'babble'? Here are five 'tweets' that might help you decide:

redclaymedia: how to spam Facebook like a pro: an insider’s confession
marlooz: how does a spoiled rich girl change a lightbulb? She says, "daddy, I want a new apartment."
erinragan: apparently it's a bad idea to discuss your dog(s) on Twitter. Spammers come out of the woodwork!
austin03112007: ouch! i just bit my freaking cheek!
wfullerton: I just ate a 32 ounce steak. I thought u all should know that.

Maybe Ozzy can help clarify a few of these now that he's gone mobile with Samsung. Enjoy!

What can direct marketers learn from this? I'm not exactly sure, but I am certainly feeling much better about the integrity of direct marketing and mailing lists nowadays.

NextMark innovations recognized by DestinationCRM (CRM Magazine)

2009-10-30T11:05:45-04:00

DestinationCRM wrote a detailed story covering the DMA's Future Industry Award winners and recognizing NextMark as one of the eight recipients of this inaugural award. According to the article:

Bernice Grossman, principal consultant and founder of Direct Marketing Resource Services (DMRS) Group and one of the FIA judges, says the award is meant to spotlight innovation thriving in the face of a recession. "The economy was so stifling," she says. "This was a way that we could tell everybody else in the industry [that] there's a lot of wonderful stuff happening."

The 11 judges, who were selected from the DMA membership, took two rounds of evaluations to winnow the field of 54 down to the group of 12 finalists. Those evaluations were based on detailed explanations provided by each submission of:

the innovative product or service, including whether the offering is entirely new or a new spin on an existing offering;

the impact the product or service has on the end user and what benefits have been achieved or are anticipated; and

the impact the product or service has had on the marketing community overall.

It's an honor to have been recognized among all the deserving innvovations in the marketing field! See the full article here.

LinkedIn Police Nabs Profile Perpetrator

2009-10-29T09:37:26-04:00

As detective Adrian Monk obsessively states "here's what happened":

On October 22, 2009 our Joe Pych, NextMark's Founder was contacted via LinkedIn to let him know he had a new colleague. Surprisingly, it was a guy from the Netherlands who was claiming to be the owner of NextMark. There is only one NextMark, so it was pretty clear that a profile perpetrator was on the loose.

I reviewed the profile and contacted LinkedIn requesting that action be taken. I was a bit concerned that it would be difficult to resolve this issue since my experiences with a few other social networks had led to some frustration.

I received the following email shortly after following up with LinkedIn Customer Support:

Dear Chris,
Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support. Thank you for informing us of this situation. We will take the appropriate action on this account.
We appreciate your assistance in making LinkedIn a professional and trustworthy site. If you have further questions, please feel free to reply to this message.
Thank you for being a valued member of our LinkedIn community!
Regards,
Jason
LinkedIn Customer Support

Moments after receiving this email I received a note from Joe indicating that the perpetrator's profile was gone. The distraction was temporary and we were back to business.

When I was thirteen I used to run from the police, but now I'm thankful for their service. I'm also thankful for guys like Jason who take initiative and get things done right.

This may not sound all that heroic, but time is valuable and LinkedIn Customer Support saved the day. Thank you Jason!

Google Campaign Insights fails in 2 big ways

2009-10-28T09:25:56-04:00

Google recently announced Google Campaign Insights: Better measurement for display advertising. I applaud their efforts because it is very difficult to measure display ad effectiveness, but Google's approach has two major flaws:

Problem #1: Sampling Method

You can't just have two groups: those who saw the ad and those who did not because the first group can be self-selecting. They may already be predisposed to taking action and put themselves in the position of seeing the ad by visiting relevant web pages. Therefore, they are naturally more responsive. Correlation is not the same as causality.

A better method is to set a control and sample group a priori. These two groups should be otherwise equal. Then expose the sample group to the ads and see how they perform.

Problem #2: Measuring Offline Behavior

If you limit your results to online behaviors (searches, clicks), you are missing much of the value of display advertising. Consider the scenario where consumer sees a display ad, but does not click and instead goes to the store and makes the purchase. Does that really happen? Yes, it has been proven by David Reiley, Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo!, who recently presented his findings at the DMEF Research Summit.

Mr. Reiley's tests conclude that offline value of the group of non-clickers exposed to advertisements exceeds the online value of the group of clickers. Keep in mind that in his study, there only ~5% were clickers over the lifetime of the campaign or, said another way, for every clicker there were 19 non-clickers.

Reiley says "understanding advertising today is the same as understanding physics in the 1500's" (and he is expert on both). You can read an abstract of the Advertising Works Project, but I highly recommend seeing his presentation if you can. It's a very well-constructed test ... not perfect (he identifies its flaws), but better than most I've seen.

Bringing offline methods to online

In the next couple of years, I predict a resurgence of display advertising as targeting and measurement become more precise - bringing methods used in the offline world with direct mail and response attribution (i.e. "match back") to the online world. It is an interesting time!

NPR cites NextMark as the Google of Mailing Lists

2009-10-27T11:40:34-04:00

Last night, NextMark was featured in part 1 of a story on data privacy by Martin Kaste on National Public Radio's All Things Considered program. NextMark's mailing list search tool was cited as the "Google for mailing lists" which is exactly what it is. It makes it easy to search virtually every mailing list available, with more than 60,000 mailing lists from 1,400 sources in the index.

Unfortunately, they used a search on "bladder" as their example. While I am sure there are certain pharmaceutical applications for this and the people with these problems would like to learn about solutions, it is an unusual example. I wish they picked a better example, but I can understand that it makes for a more interesting story (most mainstream examples would probably be considered boring by radio standards).

Mr. Kaste did a nice job in presenting a balanced story. He pointed out that:

"Reputable firms aren't just selling this information to anyone [...] you can look at the [NextMark] Web site and see that it's for sale, but they still want to know more about you before they sell it to you."

Actually, in NextMark's world, the technical term is "rent" not "sell" because the buyer does not take possession of the personal data and it can only be used once through a trusted third party service bureau that keeps the name and address data anonymous. Mr. Kaste also presented the positive effects of sharing information through a quote by an expert on best practices in marketing ;-):

"I think when it's done right, just as with a good friend, sharing personal information makes for a much relevant, meaningful relationship and without that, you're really just a number."

This is the crux of the issue.

The story continues with an interesting study by Italian economist Alessandro Acquisti that shows that people are more willing to share highly personal information on "cheesy" websites than on professional sites with well-stated privacy policies. Seems backwards, doesn't it?

Part 1 concludes with an interview with Chris Hoofnagle of the UC Berkeley School of Law who says, "if consumers knew the extent to which this information was being collected and repackaged, there would be riots in the streets." Hoofnagle is correct that there are cases where we should be concerned about the methods of gathering and trading of personal information. It's also important to note that if people knew about the controls that NextMark's clients employ to ensure privacy, then they would feel much better about sharing information and the relevance it brings to their mailbox (the opposite of "junk mail" and "spam"). Just like in any industry, there are good guys and bad guys. NextMark enables the good guys.

It will be interesting to hear if these controls are discussed in one of NPR's remaining episodes. If they are not, then I will follow up with another blog post on the topic.

In the meantime, you can listen to part 1 of Online Data Presents a Privacy Minefield on NPR's website or here:

Please add your reactions and comments below.

Going 'Postal' is No Longer Insane

2009-10-23T15:29:31-04:00

Going postal in 2010 may be the best decision you make. There's less competition in direct mail, and there's less clutter in the box!

Here's a guest post from Jim Gilbert of Gilbert Direct Marketing, with some initial optimism regarding a freeze on postage rates next year for dominant classes:

From Jim,

Over the last three years, I've been super vocal about my dislike for the U.S. Postal Service and its less-than-forward-thinking bureaucracy. When it slammed catalog mailers with 20 percent-plus postage increases in 2007, I went (pun intended) postal on it.

Earlier this year after it announced its summer postage sale, I was optimistic. But once I looked at the fine print (i.e., how much you had to mail to qualify), I was critical then, too.

I try to be fair and balanced in offering my opinions.

Therefore, I have to applaud the USPS for its announcement last week that there would not be a postal rate increase in 2010 for dominant classes.

For those of you not aware yet, last week Postmaster General Jack Potter sent out a memo announcing no 2010 rate increase, which has spread around the internet faster than a scandalous YouTube video goes viral. That memo can be reviewed here.

I know, I know: Postal rates are already ridiculously and restrictively high. But at least mailers can build their 2010 mail plans without having to cut circulation from marginal lists and housefile segments.

Along with my kudos to the postmaster and the USPS, however, I also want to put them on notice. Here goes:

Dear Mr. Postmaster General,

You've started a trend here. Between the postal summer sale and now this offer to keep postal rates stable in 2010, catalog and direct mailers believe that you may actually be interested in working to our benefit. We look forward to the next postal sale, and hope that the USPS opens it up to smaller mailers to take advantage of. We truly hope that you'll continue to stop thinking like a bureaucracy and encourage more mail volume with innovative special offers and such.

But direct marketers are also wary because the USPS holds a great deal of power and leverage over us. The last substantial postal rate increase nearly put us under with rate increases of 20 percent-plus. What was the USPS thinking? That move single-handedly drove more and more mailers into the online world. Doing the math, we believe the increase actually caused your revenues to go down due to less mail in the mailstream.

Remember this, Mr. Postmaster General: Every penny more it costs us to mail means we need to generate about 2 cents more per catalog mailed just to break even. In this economy, we need every opportunity we can get to mail our catalogs profitably. We're struggling to stay alive and keep our workers employed and our customers satisfied.

Keep up the good work, Mr. Postmaster. Please continue this trend.

Sincerely,
The Direct Mail Industry

Make your voice heard!

Reach the postmaster general at the following:

The Honorable John E. Potter
Postmaster General
U.S. Postal Service
475 L'Enfant Plaza, SW
Washington, DC 20260-0010
Email: pmgceo@usps.gov

NextMark wins Future Innovators Award at DMA09

2009-10-19T02:29:45-04:00

NextMark is on a roll! At today's opening of the DMA09 conference, the Direct Marketing Association today awarded NextMark with its inaugural Future Innovators Award. Shown above are NextMark's Joe Pych (left) and Scott Chilcutt (right) accepting the award from the DMA's Keith Baker (center).

This award is a nice validation of NextMark's developments for the list business. According to the DMA, "This award recognizes the innovative advances being made in the field of marketing. Today’s marketers, faced with unique challenges, are experimenting as they strive to rebalance. Recognizing that unexpected changes foster ingenuity and creativity, and that experiments usually garner surprising results, DMA’s FIA awards are now showcasing and rewarding those outstanding achievements. The awards will be presented each year to suppliers of new products or services exhibiting at DMA’s annual conference that are deemed the most influential and having improved the global marketing community in the previous year."

Want to see what the fuss is all about? Stop by DMA09 booth #1930 or visit http://www.NextMark.com.