DMA Recap

Home from Vegas. Phew! Good to be home, for sure.

I thought I would wrap up my commentary on the annual Direct Marketing Association's conference by sharing some of the highlights.

1. DMA's self-reported biggest accomplishment this year: the creation of a Do Not Mail plan. See the following from an article on DMA's website:

Rappaport (Donn, outgoing chairman of DMA's board of directors), who is chairman/chief executive officer of the American List Counsel, Inc. (ALC), began by highlighting the Board’s efforts to combat proposed state Do Not Mail legislation. “This year, the DMA Board marshaled all our collective talent, energy, and experience to forge a Do Not Mail action plan to tell our story to Congress, to the media, and for the first time ever, directly to the consumer."

2. Direct marketer of the year: Ebay. Last year Microsoft got this honor.

3. From John Greco's (DMA's President and CEO) opening keynote address, where he speaks about the state of the industry:

Here’s DMA’s estimate of the size of the entire direct marketing pie — well over two trillion dollars worth of sales this year, driven by direct marketing offers across all the addressable, interactive, direct response channels.

Sales driven by Internet and email marketing will exceed $500 billion this year. That number has grown very quickly over the past year. At the same time, a total of more than $702 billion of sales is being driven by the mail channel — including nearly $155 billion in catalog sales. Telephone marketing accounts for another $364 billion in additional sales, and direct response advertising in newspapers, television and other media drive $451 billion more in sales this year.

He goes on to discuss direct marketing accomplishments such as a focus on recycling. The entire transcript of his speech can be found here.

4. Theme of the DMA: "r u Connected?" Personally, I find this kinda juvenile--but that's just me...

5. Expected number of attendees: 12,000 (not sure that this many actually made it).

6. Best party: OK, I only attended two this year... But, I'll give the award to Experian and their nightclub experience at Pure in Caesars Palace. You have to agree that the projection of their name on the side of the casino was pretty cool.