Thursday, November 8, 2012

How Direct Marketing Shaped the Recent Election

Political campaigning in 2012 leveraged a range of sophisticated direct marketing tools -- and left behind important lessons on what worked and what missed the mark. An excellent "Target Marketing" magazine article has surveyed the direct marketing tactics that shaped the recent election, noting how Democrats and Republicans employed large, complex voter databases; "retargeting" web services for more effective online ads; micro-targeting analytics for personalized direct messaging; social media endorsements; and targeted e-mail and texting to capture votes and donations. For a detailed discussion, read the full article at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/election-2012-barack-obama-mitt-romney-microtargeting-retargeting-mobile-marketing-social-media-voter-databases/1

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

4 Delivery Threats to Scrub From Your E-mail List

Failing to regularly clean and update your e-mail list can result in significant deliverability decay -- ranging from delivery delays to messages lost in spam or junk folders, to outright blocking. A recent article by marketingprofs.com checks off the top four things to purge from your e-mail files right now: bounced e-mail addresses, malformed e-mail addresses (such as those missing an @ sign), fake e-mail addresses, and inactive e-mail addresses. Of course, you not only need to clean out the bad addresses today, you need to commit to regular hygiene down the road. For more detail, check out the article at http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2662/four-things-to-dump-from-your-email-list-right-now