The DMA 2010 event was kicked off by a giant plenary session with more than 10,000 participants. They put up an impressive show (watch intro video on YouTube). They even invited some celebrities including Bret Michaels (winner of US TV show Celebrity Apprentice, the show in which Donald Trump fires a participant every week).

Even though this event is a bit US-centric (they only honor US scholars, ...), it was very valuable. Another thing we noticed, was that even though this is the “Direct” Marketing conference, old-school media (e.g. TV commercials) play an important role. E.g., it resulted in some great examples for us to use in class such as this AllState ad starring Dennis Haysbert.


Mainly during the business part of the event (DMA convention) one could feel the positive influence of nearby Silicon Valley. It’s going to be interesting to find out whether next year’s event in Boston can measure up to this one...   

... for another perspective on DMA 2010, visit the WDMCentral Blog (click here) in Dutch.

DMA’s CEO Larry Kimmel talked about the DMA organization and the direct-marketing industry in general.


It was immediately obvious at this year’s DMA, the hot topic are: social media, cross-channel integration (including mobile).

We were also happy to hear that analytics has a major role to play!

There was also a huge exhibit hall, where you find all major players in the industry, trying to arouse some interest by distributing some goodies (free T-shirts, holographic posters, and a lot of stress balls, ...). We found the “usual suspects” such as the United States Postal Service, Canada Post, ...

... but also some innovative machines, such as this printer/plotter, able to mimic handwriting. Nowadays, receiving a “handwritten” letter does raise attention!

And then, there was the core of the conference: The Sessions!


These are my personal highlights:


Harrah’s Entertainment (parent company to Vegas properties such as Ceasar’s Palace, ...) provided a great case study about behavioral e-mail targeting set up by e-Dialog (also responsible for the e-campaigns of AAdvantage, Discover Card, HP, Dell). They emphasize that cross-channel advertising has a great potential. One has to be careful tough, e-mail has a “dark side”: spam. As soon as it highly relevant to the audience, customers/prospects love it! Just sending a welcome message results in great ROI. See also this press release.

The Threadless.com CEO explained how they were able to gather an entire community around the concept of designing and creating T-shirts, and more importantly build a sustainable business around this concept. This crowd-sourcing success story teaches us how innovative marketers are leveraging the “Voice of the Customer” (VOC) to drive unprecedented levels of customer engagement and sales. Inc. Magazine awarded them the prize of “most innovative small company in America” in 2008, and they are still going strong. In their presentation, they compiled a five-point checklist to guide your customer engagement strategies:

1. Use VOC insights to understand how customers and prospects define ea deeper, ongoing relationship with your company.

2. Use social media to demonstrate transparency, accountability, and mission commitment.

3. Build loyalty through engagement.

4. Elimitate impersonal, transactional, or generic customer experiences which hurt the ability to connect with your organization, express preferences, and experience the brand as promised

5. Respond quickly to customers. Social media require much faster response times (in minutes as opposed to hours or days).

Expedia CruiseShipCenters presented their cross-channel case study (in association with Lyris). They highlighted the potential of “permission marketing” (see their slide below). Their point is that if e-mail messages are customized, relevant, anticipated & personalized, customers won’t mind receiving them. They used the term “Tri-Messaging”: integrating across three channels: joining permission-based e-mail marketing, social marketing, and mobile marketing. The first is the most effective, and most measurable one, resulting in the highest ROI.