Tag: USA

Rate increases, declining prospecting, talent absorption, the failure of net neutrality, online intensity and new systems.

These were just a few of the monster trends that are about to shake the world of direct marketers, according to direct mail guru Don Libey, who spoke at the Direct Marketing Club of New York’s April luncheon at the Yale Club.
“We have endless silent partner increases ahead,” said Mr. Libey, discussing the first of several monster trends. “If you sell something, print something, publish something, or send something through the mail, you are faced with endless, unsustainable silent partners.”

The silent partners, he said, are the U.S Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and Google.

“Massive postal increases, 13 percent increases for international delivery by UPS, increases by FedEx, fuel surcharges,” he said. “What we have done is abducted our control of our business in direct marketing because we are remote.”

Rate increases are also causing a decline in prospecting, another monster trend, Mr. Libey said.

Another monster tend is talent absorption in the direct marketing industry.

A monster trend Mr. Libey is particularly concerned about is net neutrality. He suggested that special interests, lobbyists and politicians are choosing money over equality for the Internet, and that speed and access will cost direct marketers more than postage does today.

Smaller catalog size is a monster trend too, Mr. Libey said and added that he thought the move to smaller catalogs was concerning.

Mr. Libey said another monster trend is online intensity, and it is only going to get more intense.

“We’ve only seen about 10 percent of the ultimate online share of the market basket,” Mr. Libey said. “Expect a near-doubling of online influence and sales over the next three years. “

He said this trend is dangerous because it is moving people away from the basics, such as offers, lists, and response.

“We are embracing technology at a dangerous rate, and we cannot turn away from it, so we must begin to harness it and understand it,” he said.

Another trend Mr. Libey discussed was that the United States is exporting teaching about how to do direct marketing in China, India, and elsewhere. He suggested that these countries may beat the United States in the future, as their economies grow faster than the United States.

The last monster trend Mr. Libey spoke about was the fact that there is enough knowledge and experience now to create the first fully integrated, fully analytic and working enterprise-wide, multichannel, operating system.

Finally, Mr. Libey said that this is the most exciting time he has even seen in the direct marketing industry.

“It is fraught with challenges,” he said. “It is also separating the players and the also-rans. It embraces new worlds and new channels. It is global. It is expensive. And it is going to be two or three times its size in twenty years. Welcome to the dawning of the new direct marketing.”