In any economic downturn, marketers can quickly find themselves in unfamiliar territory. Sure, no two recessions are alike. But marketers who have been around the block once or twice (or three times) may notice patterns in consumers’ purchasing behavior and/or in marketers’ strategies. And those strategies can either boost or bust their overall performance.

Often what you’ll see in a recession is consumers will tighten their belts and reduce their spending. As a result, sales drop and companies start cutting costs and reducing prices. Budget cuts across the board follow.

But hold on… wholesale reductions like these can be a mistake.

So, How Do You Market In Times Like These?

With hundreds and hundreds of decisions to make every hour, how do humans ever get through the day?

Well, it comes down to System 1 and System 2 thinking.
For example, if a speeding taxi were racing toward you as you stepped off the curb, you’d jump back. No thinking involved.

Or maybe it’s something more subtle, like noticing the facial cues of an angry boss. Either way, in these types of situations, your thinking is automatic. That's called System 1 – and it’s a far cry from the more deliberate kind of thinking you do when you’re asked to work through an algebra problem, assemble some new furniture, or do your taxes — the long-form. That’s System 2 thinking.

It’s been quite a ride.

COVID-19… The Great resignation… Hybrid work styles…

For marketers, this has been the most tumultuous 2+ years in recent memory.

But if you’re reading this, congratulations, you made it this far...

So enough already. Enough looking back, enough lamenting about what was.

Let’s take a look ahead.

What’s next?

What’s out on the horizon?

What could impact your business in the next two years?

Well, how about Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Did you ever notice...

The most successful direct response campaigns have something in common —

Specifics.

I was first introduced to this idea while on a call with the great Herschell Gordon Lewis. During the discussion, he simply said — “…specifics sell.”

And the beauty of this concept is that it applies to direct mail... email... display ads... websites... landing pages... etc.

Be personal. Be relevant. Be specific.

If you write in generalities, if you write in broad strokes, if you pen mere platitudes, your copy will not only

46 million. 

That’s how many people in the US have signed up for the USPS Informed Delivery Program. This makes up about 7-10% of total US mail recipients (300 million+).  

But what is Informed Delivery? Those who sign up for Informed Delivery get daily emails from USPS, showing a preview of what’s on the way to their mailbox.  

And the impact among the people who opt in is significant. In fact, Informed Delivery emails get open rates as high as  63%. When you compare that to the 15% average open rate for other emails, it blows those numbers out of the water. 

So what does that mean for marketers? 

These days marketing is multichannel, with multiple efforts, multiple touchpoints, and multiple ways of reaching consumers. And although reaching out may be a multi-channel, multi-effort endeavor, the way consumers respond is now more singular than ever before...

Get Ready to Pivot: Marketing’s Evolution in an Ever-Changing World

Amid COVID-19 and global conflict, marketing has not stopped evolving.

Newsflash: Marketers around the country identified trusted relationships as their customers’ highest priority in 2021. Impressively, the highest percentage of marketers reported that their customers now focus more on “trusting relationships” than “low price,” despite the economic downturn. This is not a fluke: according to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, customers’ focus on trusting relationships has increased by 47% since this question was first asked in 2009.

Did you know 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years?  

It’s true.  

It’s one of the many takeaways in Simon Data’s 2022 State of Customer Data report (available here).  

That statistic alone shows how vital it is to stay on top of the latest consumer data, trends and habits. This exponential growth means marketers need to keep up… or get left behind.  

So looking ahead: what’s next for marketing data? Here’s how data trends are evolving in 2022. 

It’s hard to talk about direct mail right now without talking about COVID-19.

Over the last 24 months, we have gone through the near-normal… we are now in the new normal — and are starting to head into the next normal.

Looking back, we see that in 2020, US marketers spent less and mailed fewer pieces than the previous year, according to Winterberry Group.

Direct mail volume was down 18.1% in 2020, with 63.8 million pieces of direct marketing mail being sent.

Spending on direct mail, along with other forms of offline media, experienced a steep decrease in 2020, too — down 17.2% over 2019 to $34.9 billion. This is a continuation of a multi-year slide in volume, although 2020’s slide was steeper.

However... direct mail came roaring back in 2021

On February 1, Ron Jacobs will be one of the keynote speakers for the page2022 conference, an annual event hosted by JAGAT, the Japanese Association of Graphic Arts Technology. The presentation is titled Reimagining Business in 2022: It's about Resilience, Relevance and Refocus.

The keynote presentation focuses on decisions that printing company managements, agency managements and marketing managers will need to make in the coming years to keep up with the way that prospects and customers are changing, and the new ways that your clients are going to market.

Every attendee has shown resilience, just to get through the last two years of Covid-19. The keynote addresses some ways that they can refocus their efforts, to remain relevant and help their businesses to thrive in the future.

Click the button below to sign up for the conference (note: the conference is in Japanese but Ron's presentation is in English). And keep reading to learn more about the keynote.