By Brett Astor
Direct response television (DRTV) advertising can be very effective at driving profitable sales. If there were a downside to DRTV, most would say it’s the high cost of creating and modifying the ads and the lead times associated with that process. Direct response radio advertising compliments DRTV on these specific points, ad development costs and lead-time, extremely well. Furthermore, done right, DR radio can significantly enhance the profitability of any DRTV effort.
DRTV is often the core engine of huge direct marketing success. Why? Put simply – the numbers are bigger. However, it's also the most expensive media channel - so one has to consider the risk/reward tradeoff. As you'll learn, direct response radio plays the role of "risk minimizer" - that's why including radio advertising in your marketing efforts is such a smart business move.- READ FULL DIRECT RESPONSE ARTICLE: Why DRTV + Direct Response Radio = More $$
By Chris Setser
ConnectFirst, a cutting-edge hosted technology company, offers a Cloud Routing Platform that is very useful for limiting abandoned calls, decreasing queue times and testing multiple contact centers from the same media campaigns.
ConnectFirst helps you manage your call traffic by allowing you to make use of multiple destinations distributing calls based upon your preferences. Allocation can be configured in many ways, so no call receives a busy signal or is placed in an infinite queue.- READ FULL DIRECT RESPONSE ARTICLE: ConnectFirst Cloud Routing
By Rick Petry
The other day while holiday shopping, I found myself in a major national bookstore chain poised and ready to pull the trigger on a purchase, when my wife suggested I look up the price of the item from a competitor. Armed with my iPhone, I was able to price shop on the Net and discovered I could save $6 on this one purchase from a certain ubiquitous e-tailer. Since I was already planning on placing an order of sufficient magnitude with this purveyor of e-commerce that would guarantee me free shipping, and the purchase in my hand possessed no timeliness factor, I abandoned the bricks and mortar retailer’s merchandise and left the store to go surfing later. You’ve no doubt heard of virtual cart abandonment; welcome to the era of real world purchase interruptus.
While the consumer in me might enjoy the pressure to push down prices this competition creates, the marketer in me cringes at the way this dynamic creates leverage that erodes prices and margins. The scenario described above is perhaps the ultimate proof that a truly Darwinian rule of law has taken hold – that with the pervasiveness of money back guarantees and liberal return policies creating a level playing field – that it is pretty much price, and to a much lesser extent availability, that drives the marketplace. That being the case, and with a scant few retailers dominating the marketplace, how on earth is a manufacturer or marketer suppose to compete and make a reasonable profit?
- READ FULL DIRECT RESPONSE ARTICLE: Marketers! Combat Price Erosion With Direct Response
By Scott Richards
If you’re a direct marketer then you know how tough it is to get a consumer to raise their hand by calling in to an inbound call center, especially in this economic environment. Among the many challenges that marketers face is the fact that within the direct marketing industry and the call centers that they rely on, there is no clear definition for the various broad categories of call types. These general categories include calls that were:
* Answered
* Short
* Incomplete
* No Answer
* Busy
Within these broad categories, there are sub-categories of various call dispositions. These include:
* Caller Hung Up Before Connecting
* No One On Line
* Prank or Obscene Call
* Wrong Number
* Test Call
* Computerized Autodialer
* Customer Service
* Hung-Up Mid-Script
* Misunderstood Offer
* Doesn’t Have A Check/Credit Card Info Ready
* Question About Payment
* Question About Product
* Will Call Back
* Order Calls
- READ FULL DIRECT RESPONSE ARTICLE: Control Your Telemarketing Data To Control Your Fate
By Hal Altman
This year, the retail industry has experienced the closing, bankruptcy or near bankruptcy of some of the largest and most successful retail names of the last twenty-five years. Others such as Wal Mart, Costco, Sam’s, Target, and Bed Bath and Beyond seem to not only survive, but are also able to show profits in our unstable economy.
What does this mean to the Direct Response industry? Less outlets to sell product that television, radio or web has worked hard to advertise, establish and create a brand for.
Retail chains have not only breathed life into Direct Response products, but in most cases, successfully outsold traditional Direct Response sales exponentially.
In tough economic times, retailers search for recognized Direct Response product and know that with continued television and radio coverage, combined with retail exposure, this can be a win-win situation for all.
The next question is how do Direct Marketers prepare and get into the lucrative world of retail? The answer is easy, and doesn’t cost any more to prepare for retail distribution while you introduce your product via traditional Direct Response channels.
Look into a retail distribution company that can guide you through the process of packaging your merchandise so that it can be easily and inexpensively ready for a rush retail test. You don’t want to ever be caught in a position of not being able to immediately furnish your product for a retail test if the opportunity arises. - READ FULL DIRECT RESPONSE ARTICLE: Having a Plan Will Save you Money
By Mauricio Duran
The myriad ways that businesses are leveraging SharePoint clearly demonstrate that in today’s Web 2.o world, the Web site is no longer simply online “brochure-ware.” Indeed, SharePoint-built corporate Web sites act as virtual stores, online communities and portal destinations where users visit, buy and interact. Using SharePoint, it’s easy to create wikis, blogs, and portals to enable groups to collaborate and personalize content based on the user’s profile and needs. In addition to sharing and managing content, SharePoint allows businesses to deploy search functionality as well as analyze important corporate data. It is a little known fact that SharePoint is also being used more and more to optimize search engine rankings. - READ FULL DIRECT RESPONSE ARTICLE: Leveraging SharePoint to Optimize Your Search Engine Rankings
By Shari Thurow
When I ask online and direct marketers what they believe the definition of search engine optimization (SEO) is, in its simplest terms, they automatically say, “Making a site #1 in Google.” I understand this common perception. Because, classically, search engine optimization has been defined as designing, writing, programming, and coding (in XHTML) an entire Web site to maximize the chance that Web pages will appear at the top of search engine listings for targeted keyword phrases.
- Understanding Web Searcher Behavior and Search Engine Optimization
A Sony Pictures Entertainment company, 2waytraffic knows television audiences and how to produce compelling content that puts viewers in active mode. Two years ago, 2waytraffic’s EVP of Business Development, James Joyce, created a unique platform that fuses participation TV in programming with telco-based DRTV offers. Viewers are invited by the host, judge or other talent from a popular national TV show to call a toll-free number and vote or give their opinion on show topics. After participating, callers are presented with several direct response offers, which are fulfilled by a live call center agent or transcription database capture.
2waytraffic has successfully integrated this experience into more than a dozen nationally syndicated and network programs, including Maury, Judge Joe Brown, The View, Inside Edition and The Biggest Loser, among many others, offering advertisers a unique opportunity to instantly convert these valuable audiences into customers in a completely measurable way. 2waytraffic inserts advertisers into these programs on a Cost Per Lead basis, making their platform completely unique in the marketplace. Now, advertisers can run per inquiry-based campaigns on nationally broadcast programs in some of the most sought after programs on television, where per inquiry media placements have never been available to them.
- Converting Viewers Into Customers: 2waytraffic gets TV viewers to call
By Rick Petry
With the world mired in the thick of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, a number of products being marketed using direct response advertising are thriving above the fray. What are some of the common characteristics of these goods and their attendant campaigns that are bucking the tide? And what lessons can be uncovered that might help marketers and their supply chain attain similar success?
When basic security is threatened -- from job to housing to financial stability -- one natural course of action is to turn inward, to take stock. In that process, people come to terms with what they truly value. It has often been said that without one’s health, you have nothing, that all of the other things in life that may seem important are rendered meaningless. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that a review of the Infomercial Monitoring Service (IMS) report reveals that health and fitness products comprise over one-third of both the top 25 ranked infomercial and short-form campaigns currently running. - Direct Response: The Hope for Recessionary Woes?
By Scott Richards
One of the oldest and most effective forms of direct response marketing has been the “per inquiry” (PI) model of advertising. PI advertising has been around decades before Google popularized the model online. Simply put, with PI advertising, the advertiser pays only for qualified responses. What constitutes a “qualified response” has always been the tricky part.
While technology has changed, the core model of PI advertising has not. Therein lies the problem. The success of Google’s online advertising platform can be attributed, in part, to its tool, which brought a degree of transparency to the process. - Putting the Trust Back in Per Inquiry Advertising
