Happy Birthday to the Direct Marketing Blog!

Yes, that's right . . . our Direct Marketing Blog is 1-year-old today. In blog years, that's all grown up! And, we are still loving having this blog, 233 posts later. When you subtract out weekends and holidays, that means we've posted pretty much every other day in the last year. We're feeling pretty, pretty smug about that! :)

Seriously, we hope you, our valued readers have enjoyed our posts on all things direct marketing. And, we hope that we've been able to provide you with a new nugget or two as food for thought for your direct marketing strategies over the past year.

Now, down to the brass tacks . . . so, after a year of blogging are we rich, are we famous? What exactly has this blogging thing done for you? . . . you may be asking. Good question.

Well, we aren't exactly rich (except in character), but perhaps we're just-a-little-bit-famous (at least we have t-shirts from the Blogworld Expo that say we are). In reality, this blog has accomplished exactly what we wanted it to accomplish for us. It's established our foray into social media/marketing. We have over 1,000 unique visitors per month that read our blogs and many more than that who visit often. We believe we have brought our direct marketing expertise to a world-wide audience who we may not have otherwise been able to reach as a West-Coast-based-in-the-US consulting firm.

However, we believe that aside from our great readers, the next greatest benefit to us has been the partnerships that we have developed with other bloggers that are also in direct marketing -- but in complimentary spaces.

Here's a concrete example . . . we often refer to Robert Rosenthal of the Mothers of Invention Creative Agency and his Freaking Marketing blog. Robert operates a brilliant creative agency that provides his customers with out-of-the-box creative development and campaign deployment, along with a myriad of other very forward-thinking services that we simply don't offer. However, with our data and analytical services expertise, we, too, offer services that Robert doesn't offer. Together, we think we can provide a very compelling and complimentary service offering that it's tough to find in the marketplace.

Don't get me wrong, you can find other agencies and analytical firms out there and even some companies who offer it all. What I'm saying is that with our very specific expertise -- and our very different approach to direct marketing -- you can hire in some non-traditional direct marketers that will be able to provide you with solutions very different -- and we believe better and more relevant today -- than the traditional DM firms.

Our point here is that we've figured this out through authoring our respective blogs. We found Robert and Robert found us. From the purest sense, this is the beauty of Social Media . . . building communities, linking with others and creating relationships. See . . . it ain't just for the teenagers! And, by the way, isn't this what pure business strategy is all about, too? Making connections with the right people and creating value for your customers, while building profitability for your business. Yep, sounds about right.

So, yes . . . our blogging experience has been very successful from our viewpoint. As we embark on our 2nd year, we'll continue to comb the news and the industry for thought-provoking information that we hope you'll find interesting and will help you do what you do more successfully. Meanwhile, thanks for reading and commenting on our blog posts over the last year. Keep your comments coming -- we love them! And, we'd love to hear how social media has helped your business. If you have a story to share with us and our readers, please do so!