Articles by Wes Sparling
Blog Archive
Tips for Restarting Your Marketing During COVID-19
Wondering how to restart your marketing during COVID-19? We’ve seen extensive change in consumer behavior over the past few months. Some of the change is expected to be temporary, and some is expected to continue long into the future. You’ll need to accommodate these changes as you restart your marketing while COVID-19 continues. The national […]
Considerations for Marketing During a Pandemic
COVID-19, the desire to minimize the spread of the virus that causes it, and the mounting fear associated with the idea of a pandemic have already caused extensive behavior changes across the U.S.: travel restrictions, canceled meetings, increases in online shopping, restrictions on group meetings, school closures, and more. History has shown us that when […]
Why Attribution Models Are Important to Achieving Customer Acquisition Goals
At IWCO Direct, it’s our belief that who you speak to is as important as what you say. While I have addressed it before, when attempting to calculate your return on marketing investment (ROMI), it’s important to consider the role of attribution and the method you use for response and conversion calculation when engaging in […]
How Marketing Models Minimize Guesswork and Maximize Predictability
In today’s direct marketing universe, we have options for how we target prospective customers. We can target based on personas, on one or more criteria generally referred to as “criteria selection,” or we can target based on models. In my last article, I expanded on personas and how they are used in targeting. In […]
Where Does Cluster Analysis Fit into Your Marketing Strategy?
In my most recent post, I addressed the strengths and weaknesses of marketing personas and analytic segmentation. To continue that conversation, I would like to step back and address a more common database marketing tool: clustering. Keep reading for a brief overview of what cluster analysis is, its strengths and weaknesses, and how it […]
It’s Time for Marketing Personas to Get Real
I am old enough, though just barely, to have met more than a few unsung heroes of the advertising world. I’m talking about those people who worked in agencies making the successful campaigns we have all come to know and love: creative directors, copywriters, and others who put pen to paper to create campaigns like […]
The Power of Lists: How Our List Resources Enhance Our Clients’ Marketing Programs
Knowing exactly who to target is a critical element for success in any direct marketing campaign. It can be difficult or impossible to produce effective campaigns and generate desired response without a qualitative understanding of the consumers you’re marketing to. That’s why, for most mid-sized and mature companies, a combination of predictive analytics models based […]
Best Practices for Integrating Digital and Physical Marketing Campaigns
It is generally accepted that integrated marketing efforts outperform plans based on a single tactic in both the overall volume of leads and sales. The key question becomes, “What is the ideal mix of tactics for my industry in general and my business specifically?” To answer that question you need to understand, in as much […]
Testing Tuesdays: A Discussion on Direct Mail Measurement
Measuring the effectiveness of direct mail is a frequent topic of conversations with clients, prospects and those generally interested in better understanding how direct mail benefits their marketing campaigns and impacts their business. It has been said, accurately I believe, that you can’t improve what you can’t measure. Of course, this implies that serious thought […]
Testing Tuesday: The Road to Multi-Channel Attribution
Last week Jim Leone described the current state of the industry when it comes to using data to drive dynamic content for direct mail campaigns. He mentioned it’s an on-going process that continues to get better, but we haven’t reached our final destination. In much the same way, when it comes to multi-channel attribution and […]
