- Email: [email protected]
From the practitioner
JOHN D. YECK Yeck Brothers Group, Dayton, Ohio
From the Practitioner Hang on to Your Old Journals With its next issue, the name of this journal will change from the Journal of Direct Marketing to the Journal of Interactive Marketing. This may seem like a dramatic change of direction. That’s neither the intention nor the fact. The word interactive was chosen by the new editors of the Journal to acknowledge that an entirely new medium has been added to the arsenal of direct marketers. That medium, of course, is the Internet. It’s accompanied by that dramatic, new, exploding information library and shopping mall, the World Wide Web. The new Internet medium adds speed, reach, greater convenience, and a certain contagious excitement to the direct marketing process. All direct marketing media are “interactive,” of course, and the new title of the Journal will encompass all of them, not only the newest one. That’s important, for the basic direct marketing process remains the same. Yes, as the result of the digital revolution, a lot of things are changing. The buyer is in charge of the transaction to a much greater degree; copywriters are challenged to be more persuasive and more concise; different products and services appear; the perception of privacy invasion is more intense. However, the fundamental principles of marketing direct to the buyer have not changed.
Most of what has been learned in the past by direct marketers still applies. No one person better illustrates how the lessons learned in traditional direct marketing can be applied successfully in the new electronic world than Michael Dell. Dell’s astonishing career began only a few years ago when he decided to go into business selling personal computers direct from his college dormitory room and his car trunk. Experts poohpoohed the idea that anyone could make a profit selling such a complicated, costly product by mail. “It takes millions to start a successful direct marketing business today,” they said. ‘You can’t do on the kitchen table any more.” But Dell didn’t know that. He followed the basic principles of direct marketing and discovered the experts were wrong. Then, as the Internet began to mature, he used that medium to communicate with those customers and prospects who preferred it. Other PC manufacturers came on the Internet also, but Dell had a special advantage. He recognized that Internet selling is direct marketing, with the addition of a new medium that increases “speed, reach, convenience, and excitement.” The medium used shapes the direct marketing process to a degree, of course, but the medium is only a relatively small part of the total process. Much of it remains substantially the same, regardless of the media used. Dell had all the other necessary infrastructure in place. Consequently, let’s look at Michael Dell and his direct marketing efforts now. He’s one of the world’s richer individuals, living in
© 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. CCC 0892-0591/97/040002-02
2 JOURNAL OF DIRECT MARKETING
VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 AUTUMN 1997
a $10,000,000 mansion, a tad larger than the college dorm room where his business began, and not even the trunk of his Mercedes 500SL, large as it is, can come close to handling his inventory. But the point I want to make is this. Dell, after only about six months on the Web, had become its largest PC retailer, with sales growing 20 percent per month. Why? Pretty obvious, isn’t it? It’s because Dell learned direct marketing from the ground up. Electronic commerce is the perfect extension of the company’s direct-sales business. And, while he substituted electronics for mail and other media, Dell called on the many other traditional, fundamental elements of the direct marketing method that he and his company had previously learned to help hi gain his early lead on the Internet. Direct buyers now account for nearly one third of the PC business and Dell himself has been quoted as calling the Internet “the ultimate direct (marketing) model.”
JOURNAL OF DIRECT MARKETING
So don’t throw away your old copies of the Journal of Direct Marketing just yet. Much of the direct market-
ing research done in the past will provide a platform for new research in the future. The importance of selecting the best offer, identifying and reaching the correct audience, crafting an effective message with persuasive copy and art and maintaining an efficient “back end” service remains the same. Let’s assume, as Dell’s experience would indicate, that electronic commerce is, indeed, the perfect extension of a direct marketing business, as some assert, and that the Internet is the ultimate direct model. That would indicate plenty of areas for academic inquiry into similarities and differences between the past ten years of direct marketing and the next ten. Get ready to read and contribute to an informative, interesting, exciting new Journal; but hang on to the old issues, too.
VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 AUTUMN 1997 3
From the Practitioner Hang on to Your Old Journals With its next issue, the name of this journal will change from the Journal of Direct Marketing to the Journal of Interactive Marketing. This may seem like a dramatic change of direction. That’s neither the intention nor the fact. The word interactive was chosen by the new editors of the Journal to acknowledge that an entirely new medium has been added to the arsenal of direct marketers. That medium, of course, is the Internet. It’s accompanied by that dramatic, new, exploding information library and shopping mall, the World Wide Web. The new Internet medium adds speed, reach, greater convenience, and a certain contagious excitement to the direct marketing process. All direct marketing media are “interactive,” of course, and the new title of the Journal will encompass all of them, not only the newest one. That’s important, for the basic direct marketing process remains the same. Yes, as the result of the digital revolution, a lot of things are changing. The buyer is in charge of the transaction to a much greater degree; copywriters are challenged to be more persuasive and more concise; different products and services appear; the perception of privacy invasion is more intense. However, the fundamental principles of marketing direct to the buyer have not changed.
Most of what has been learned in the past by direct marketers still applies. No one person better illustrates how the lessons learned in traditional direct marketing can be applied successfully in the new electronic world than Michael Dell. Dell’s astonishing career began only a few years ago when he decided to go into business selling personal computers direct from his college dormitory room and his car trunk. Experts poohpoohed the idea that anyone could make a profit selling such a complicated, costly product by mail. “It takes millions to start a successful direct marketing business today,” they said. ‘You can’t do on the kitchen table any more.” But Dell didn’t know that. He followed the basic principles of direct marketing and discovered the experts were wrong. Then, as the Internet began to mature, he used that medium to communicate with those customers and prospects who preferred it. Other PC manufacturers came on the Internet also, but Dell had a special advantage. He recognized that Internet selling is direct marketing, with the addition of a new medium that increases “speed, reach, convenience, and excitement.” The medium used shapes the direct marketing process to a degree, of course, but the medium is only a relatively small part of the total process. Much of it remains substantially the same, regardless of the media used. Dell had all the other necessary infrastructure in place. Consequently, let’s look at Michael Dell and his direct marketing efforts now. He’s one of the world’s richer individuals, living in
© 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. CCC 0892-0591/97/040002-02
2 JOURNAL OF DIRECT MARKETING
VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 AUTUMN 1997
a $10,000,000 mansion, a tad larger than the college dorm room where his business began, and not even the trunk of his Mercedes 500SL, large as it is, can come close to handling his inventory. But the point I want to make is this. Dell, after only about six months on the Web, had become its largest PC retailer, with sales growing 20 percent per month. Why? Pretty obvious, isn’t it? It’s because Dell learned direct marketing from the ground up. Electronic commerce is the perfect extension of the company’s direct-sales business. And, while he substituted electronics for mail and other media, Dell called on the many other traditional, fundamental elements of the direct marketing method that he and his company had previously learned to help hi gain his early lead on the Internet. Direct buyers now account for nearly one third of the PC business and Dell himself has been quoted as calling the Internet “the ultimate direct (marketing) model.”
JOURNAL OF DIRECT MARKETING
So don’t throw away your old copies of the Journal of Direct Marketing just yet. Much of the direct market-
ing research done in the past will provide a platform for new research in the future. The importance of selecting the best offer, identifying and reaching the correct audience, crafting an effective message with persuasive copy and art and maintaining an efficient “back end” service remains the same. Let’s assume, as Dell’s experience would indicate, that electronic commerce is, indeed, the perfect extension of a direct marketing business, as some assert, and that the Internet is the ultimate direct model. That would indicate plenty of areas for academic inquiry into similarities and differences between the past ten years of direct marketing and the next ten. Get ready to read and contribute to an informative, interesting, exciting new Journal; but hang on to the old issues, too.
VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 AUTUMN 1997 3