Current Issue

Ask & Receive
All donors are not created equal. As in the for-profit world, the most financially valuable individuals are the ones who undertake long-term relationships with an organization-those who embrace a nonprofit's mission and make donations again and again. In a perfect...

Think Small Screen
Designers polishing their skills on e-mail campaigns are working from a smaller toolbox. With technical options primarily limited to carefully composed images set in HTML tables, the e-mail campaign of today will not work using either the newest JavaScript nor...

Coming Clean

As a direct marketer, you now that the list, creative, product, offer and mailer all play significant roles in motivating your customers to buy from you. The list-your file of customers-is often cited as the single most important factor in...

Make an Offer
How important is the offer in B-to-B marketing?

Answer: Very. I have seen numerous tests in which a simple change of offer has increased the response rate by 25 percent to 900 percent-dramatically improving return on marketing dollars. The...

Smoothing a Bumpy Ride
To combat the triple challenge of economic uncertainty, slowing market gains and seasonal swings, e-commerce merchants must shift focus to a previously neglected stage of the sales process: customer retention. Currently, online retailers allocate 53 percent of their marketing budgets...

How's Your Brand's Margin?
When was the last time you took your brand on a holiday? A real, live "getaway from it all" pause for refreshment and renewal? I don't mean the annual rah-rah sales meeting or the obligatory management off-site. Think about...

Results of a Different Kind
If you've been thinking about your company's carbon footprint, you're just a step away from a bigger idea that's taking shape in business culture today. It's called ethical marketing, and it was the focus of a keynote speech by David...

Building a Good Market
They're the people who are in charge of buying everything in a university, office complex or government building-from the carpeting to the furniture to the heating system. They're facility managers, and they're the perfect market for anyone selling any product...

Case Study
Working to gather new donors in support of lupus research, Joshua Estrin, CEO of the Southeast Florida division of the Lupus Foundation of America, often finds himself asking, "What does it take to ignite the philanthropic spark to ‘harvest’ new...

Book Club
According to Nielsen, as of May 2008, the overall Internet penetration of U.S. consumers stood at 80 percent. The landing page can be a stand-alone page, a part of a special-purpose microsite, or a page on the company’s main...