Every now and then you’ll hear someone describing a difficult process as being “like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree.” It doesn’t matter what color the Jell-O is, or what kind of nail you use, or how hard you hit the nail. It just doesn’t work. Read More

  It is that time of year again. The time of year when everyone sends out their holiday marketing campaign, just in time to get ready for the New Year. You hope it will have the desired impact, but is there any way that you can really tell if your direct mail is having the desired impact. Read More

  If you have never heard of NLP, you are not alone. NLP, or Neuro Linguistic Programming, has been around since the seventies, but it is only recently that it has been embraced by certain online marketers as a method to convert more. Here, we give you a crash course in what NLP is, and how you can use it to improve your direct marketing campaigns. Read More

  You may not realize it, but your company has a personality. That personality is your brand, and your brand determines how your customers think and feel about you, and what they expect from you. Your brand may be carefully calculated and executed, or it may be something that has evolved organically over time. Whichever is true for you, however, you need to make sure that your direct mail campaigns match and complement your brand. Here is how you can do that. Read More

  Sometimes we take positions in life that are diametrically opposed to one another.  For football fans, you’re either a Broncos fan or a Raiders fan—A Green Bay Packers fan or a Bears fan. When it comes to popular music, you either like rap or you think it’s the worst thing to come along in the history of music. There just isn’t much middle ground. Read More

  A direct mail campaign is a great way to get your message across to a large number of people and businesses in a particular area. However, even with the best graphic design and a message that is timely and on point, if you’re not paying attention to maintaining your database of contacts, you might be spending money on marketing that will never be seen. Here are a few essential tips to keep your direct mail database up to date. Read More

  When most of us hear the word “integration” we think of technology and how different devices (smart phones, tablets, computers—and even smart watches) need to be able to talk to one another. Maybe we even think about how Google has pushed for mobile-friendly sites and actually “punishes” sites that don’t perform well on mobile platforms. Read More

  You probably don’t think about color much. Maybe you leave the graphic design up to someone else. Perhaps you just use the same colors for everything, regardless of what it is. If any of those apply, however, you need to stop, sooner rather than later, and start paying attention to color. Read More

  It’s hard to get through a day any more without hearing someone say, “Well, that’s not written in stone.” The idea is that everything is negotiable. People and businesses aren’t rigid—they’re flexible. And there’s a lot to like about that. Read More

  Every once in a while, marketers get things massively, spectacularly wrong. Over the years, you have probably heard about costly campaigns being cancelled, and public apologies being issued. Memorable occasions when brands put their proverbial foot in it included when AT&T tweeted a picture of twin beams of light overlaid on the twin towers on a smart phone. That prompted a backlash for their insensitivity. Or what about the time that McDonalds compared wanting a Big Mac to depression? Read More