Blog

Three-letter abbreviations are the curse of business communication. Everyone in marketing is familiar with ROI (return on investment) and can discuss KPIs (key performance indicators). But a relative newcomer to the buzzword circuit, at least for direct marketers, is NPS or Net Promoter Score.

In...

Back when I first started working at Hacker Group, I learned about what we call “the safe assumption.”

The safe assumption is that the people who are viewing your marketing message don’t know you and don’t care about your product. The safe assumption is that they only care about what’s in it for them.

If you ignore the safe assumption, you can do some...

Doesn’t it seem like travel marketing and mobile ought to be a perfect fit?

Last week, I met with one of the leading travel conference organizers looking to firm up their speaking roster for this year’s event. We talked for a few moments about what’s most on the minds of the travel marketers he serves, and it’s clear: everyone wants mobile this year.

Hearing...

ROI is not a trendy business buzzword. It’s fundamental to marketing success. And who knows return on investment better than direct and digital marketers?

We keep hearing about big data. Marketers are (finally) delving into their customer files to learn what really works. They are using direct marketing unique predictive abilities and running the numbers on their programs before they...

Digital and direct marketers talk about measurement. We like to brag about measuring everything we do at every step along the way. We’re hearing more about “big data” every day. The implication being that we have more information than we know what to do with.

Some marketers forget that we can do so much more with the data when we have a good idea what it means. We need a...

I have a teeny-tiny rant. More of a crank, really. It's this: Many media and marketing articles online have a quirk I find annoying. It's the pop culture headline reference. You've seen it.

What I Learned from <Inception, Sun Tzu, my dog, Indiana Jones, Bridget Jones, Alice in Wonderland> about Social Media Marketing

7 Things <Captain Kangaroo, Game of Thrones,...

You’d be amazed by what you can learn about direct marketing in your neighborhood grocery store, or even under your kitchen sink.

Take, for example, oh I don’t know… pest control products?  Your relationship with said items may not be as intimate as mine was when I lived in a tiny studio apartment in a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, but back then I didn’t appreciate...

Turns out, every day as a creative professional, I’m in a Keynesian Beauty Contest.  

I think we all agree that an artist is someone who seeks the beauty of truth, someone who, by exploring and expanding his or her own perceptions of the world, enriches the lives of those who experience his or her art. That’s what we creative professionals do all day long. 

Only...

Kill me (no pun intended) if I spent too much time at a two-day meeting sequestered in a windowless casino conference room in VEGAS discussing the topic of Deathcare (how AWESOME is that?!?!?! It makes me sound like a character from some indie film), where part of the conversation included timeless management discussions about the Who (not the band), the What, the Why,...

One of my favorite things about my job is the fact that I learn something new every single day. It's a pretty grand statement - but it's true (and often just a little bit painful).

This week, I learned a lot. And while attending a client meeting in Las Vegas discussing the subject of funeral planning, I was exposed to a new concept with great appeal: Umami....

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings needs to tell all his detractors and the fair-weather fans bailing on his stock to read a book.  More specifically, they should check out a paper by Jakob Nielsen in which he postulates the exponential growth of internet bandwidth every two years.  Nielsen's Law claims the speed with which we can download Internet content (let’s just say a movie...

I confess, I love Brand.   I really do.

Blasphemy, you say, coming from a Direct Marketer?  Not at all!  Let me tell you why.

First I should clarify:  When I say “I love Brand” I don’t have a collection of shot glasses I won on eBay with my favorite teams’ logos on them; I don’t secretly flip through InStyle to see what J-Lo or...

by Carrin Johnson and Tara Wingo

We both recently upgraded our 3g and 3gs iPhones to the new iPhone 4s. Our lives are forever changed. As project managers we rely heavily on our iPhones to tell us where to be, what to do, what to say, what to eat, where to look…OK, so we’re exaggerating, but seriously it would be hard to live without this thing now that we’ve experienced...

My 12-year-old is onto something. When shopping at a mall retailer whose name prominently includes the word “American,” my son observed their clothing ironically was manufactured overseas. This didn’t make sense to him, and it doesn’t to me. But I’m encouraged by a new

With Halloween here, I’m reminded of an incident that took place about this time last year at the previous company I worked for. One of our suppliers was located in Mexico and Karen, one of our sales reps, called the Naucalpán office asking the Spanish-speaking phone operator to speak to Carlos, our contact there. “Sorry, Carlos no is here. They dead.” “What?!...

Postal officials have said that, without help, the USPS will default on several payments to the federal government and will be $10 billion in the red as of September 2011. They have already stopped contributing to the Federal Employee Retirement System account and are now targeting 120,000 jobs for layoffs by 2015. The Postal Service also wants to increase postage rates, reduce delivery days, increase...

• Where is my TC with those LMs?
• My phone’s ringing…answer it or ignore? Ummm…voicemail for sure.
• What color pen should I use today?  Green, Blue, Pink, ORANGE!
• Did I update my schedule for status?  It’s in 5 minutes…
• Print status
• Oh, something shiny…
• Print status!
• Is that a shiny...

Evangelical; adjective. Also, e•van•gel•ic. 1. pertaining to or in keeping with the gospel and its teachings. 2. Marked by ardent or zealous enthusiasm for a cause.

I am evangelical about Netflix. I am a loyal and enthusiastic member. And they have been a great client to Hacker Group.  One of the things that is core to any strategic discussion...

I had a great time talking with the people who attended my session at the DMA!

I always find I learn more by preparing to speak and then discussing the topic than I ever would by attending even the best possible sessions. So I’m very grateful I had the opportunity to present.

Since I was talking about multi-channel marketing, it’s not surprising that I got a couple of questions...

The “convergence marketing” session at DMA 2011 by Richard Rosen reminded me of a tweet I read yesterday that said “it looks like direct marketers are more concerned about brand than general agencies are.”

Rosen is talking about taking the best of brand and direct and converging these two disciplines.

The Rosen Velocity Scale that shows the convergence is a...