Email

According to the Direct Marketing Association, media planners would be wise to remember their old friends. Email, the oldest new media going, returns over $57 in income for every email campaign dollar spent. Many agencies shy away from this old-fashioned tactic, which may not be hot -- but it works. Never forget that ROI is the name of the marketing game. And that emails with video can drive response even more.

More and more marketers are trying their hands at viral video, and we're seeing a few clues that their tactics are getting a lot better. A Gmail clip currently making the rounds comes courtesy of Saatchi in Moscow. Two artists create a giant rendering of a Gmail page, meaning the Gmail brand is in full view at all times. It's fascinating to watch, it's easy to remember the company it touts, and it proves once and for all that creating virals is an art.

Meet today's consumer vigilantes. Many are arming themselves with video cameras, computer keyboards, and mobile devices to launch their own personal forms of insurrection. Frustrated by the usual fix-it options-obediently waiting on hold with Bangalore, gamely chatting online with a scripted robot-more consumers are rebelling against company-prescribed service channels. After getting nowhere with the call center, they're sending "e-mail carpet bombs" to the C-suite, cc-ing the top layer of management with their complaints, and publicizing misdeeds via YouTube.

Traditional advertisers bemoan the demise of the mass appointment TV audience, but DRTV veterans shrug unconcerned. Provided that media rates are set by sane GSMs, fragmentation will never destroy the direct response model. We've always built our audience by methodically aggregating comparatively small groups. One thousand clusters of 1,000 consumers respond significantly better than do 1 million viewers you reach all in one shot - so long as historical response data directs your audience targeting and media buys.

A This Week In Etail post notes that in a sample of roughly one thousand company websites, a mere two made YouTube a visible part of their home page. Though dozens more companies post their videos there, hardly anyone makes the direct linkage. Is this a missed opportunity? Shari's Berries thinks so. Its marketing manager comments that a Valentine's Day email featuring a YouTube video link was one of its top performing campaigns. What more proof could you want? They sold out of the Prince Kiss a Lot Frog!

The L.A. Times ran a story in its Business section last week extolling the virtues of the Videoactive Report. Okay, our Report wasn't featured, but the article makes a strong case for newsletters just like it. According to The Times, these e-newsletters are popular because they're so efficient. Why slog through newspapers, magazines, and websites every day when others will do it for you and send you the results?

Health services companies spent $2.4 billion on direct marketing advertising in 2007, resulting in $28.7 billion in sales -- or an ROI of $11.86 for each dollar spent -- according to a new report by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). Most direct marketing-driven sales are divided among three channels: telephone (32.7%), internet (24.8%), and direct mail (23.9%).

In a recent Freaking Marketing blog post, Robert Rosenthal asks an excellent question of Super Bowl advertisers. Why aren't they using this biggest of all soapboxes to make a little cross-channel gold? Specifically, why do they bypass the opportunity to drive consumers to the web, collect opt-in data, and then add a little email to their marketing mix. As Rosenthal says, "The moment you gain permission to send email, you bring your subsequent media cost down to the lowest possible level." Pretty hard to argue with that one....

When US consumers say they are interested in a company, more than one-half of them are open to getting an interactive follow-up such as a personalized or generic e-mail or text message, according to Vertis' 2007 Customer Focus Tech Savvy study.