DMA Reinstates the International Pavilion
In the last issue of DM Diary I expressed dismay at the DMA's decision to drop their international section at the next Annual Conference & Exhibition in Orlando.
This would deprive exhibitors from more easily meeting visitors active in international direct marketing
and deprive visitors from more easily meeting international service providers - any one of whom could be
helpful to them in overseas markets. Surely this is what exhibitions are all about!
I met Charles Prescott, Vice-President International of the DMA for lunch in New York in January, and
he expressed surprise at reading this piece in DM Diary. He stated the decision not to hold an International
Pavilion in future had been taken by the “Conference Group” without any reference to him or to Bob Wientzen,
the DMA's president.
He indicated the DMA may be willing to change their decision and reinstate the International Pavilion if
enough exhibitors supported the idea.
We agreed to email some of our contacts to gauge opinion and succeeded in stirring up a “hornet's nest”!
Most exhibitors expressed their unequivocal support for an International Pavilion although some were reluctant
to give up their better “slotting” under the traditional point system the DMA uses to allocate booth positioning.
The International Pavilion tends to be placed slightly to one side of the exhibition hall.
However, we were deluged by email (and so was the DMA) from visitors who categorically wanted an
International Pavilion so they could network more easily. (After all if visitors can meet international service
providers more easily in one compact area, exhibitors will do more business and the DMA will be happy when
they continue to exhibit in the future).
DMA decided to do their own research and announced publicly a couple of weeks later they had
conducted a quick survey amongst last year's exhibitors to assess potential interest in reinstating an International
Pavilion to find “only six responded and five said don't bother.” I was later told “only two had shown interest,
and that was lukewarm at best.”
At this point I began to experience a mild frisson of irritation since I knew from the emails I had
received that the official DMA statement simply did not reflect the majority view.
I then asked some of the exhibitors I knew to express their views to the DMA again, but this time to
copy me on their emails. This provided undeniable email evidence that at least 11 exhibitors (only those we
knew) were clear and unequivocal about their preference to have the International Pavilion reinstated.
Office politics within the DMA obviously moves in a weird and wonderful way. I do not for one nano-second
blame either Charles Prescott or Bob Weintzen for the incorrect decision to try and close down the
International Pavilion. I do have concerns about the poor judgment and unilateral decision-making displayed by
whoever it is in charge of the DMA's “Conference Logistics Department”.
* * * * *
Will the DMA Address Real International DM Issues at the Next “Global Weekend”?
The last issue of “Currents and Crossroads”, the DMA newsletter aimed at international members,
displayed a sudden burst of enthusiasm for international issues by reporting a plan to revive the Global
Weekend and have more “international sessions” at the next Annual in Orlando.
I was a member of the DMA's International Advisory Board which helped introduce the first Global
Weekend about 5 years ago. It wasn't a bad first effort and the weekend was reasonably well attended.
Subsequently attendance declined and it was not held at all last year.
At the last Global Weekend, which I did not attend, I felt particularly sorry to hear about the Managing
Director of the Financial Times who was asked to speak and flew over from London for the occasion. A friend
of mine, together with Richard Varey, a representative of the Financial Times in the United States, arrived late
for his presentation - to find just one person in the audience!
I'm sure this was no reflection at all on what the speaker had to say or any lack of interest in
international issues, but more likely on the low number of attendees based on general disenchantment with
“international” events organized by the DMA. The DMA will need to do some hard thinking to find ways of
generating excitement for the next (reinstated) “Global Weekend”.
* * * * *
Will the IDMF in London Become a Better Networking Event for International Direct Marketers?
I attended the first two days of the International Direct Marketing Fair in London early March (my
company had a stand there) and I certainly noticed a “buzz” in the air - always the sign of a successful event.
(You can experience a similar “buzz” in popular restaurants!). Most of the large international players attended,
and the networking was good.
There was nothing particularly compelling (or international) about the conference programme so I didn't
bother to attend any of the sessions. During a chat with Jenny Moseley (past Chair of the U.K. DMA) and
James Kelly, who has recently taken over from her, I mentioned the lack of any international or cross-border
focus in the conference agenda. From their reaction, I suspect - and hope - they will decide to add more of an
international flavour to IDMF proceedings next year.
* * * * *
Collecting Payment Can Be a Big Challenge When Mailing Locally Within Asian Markets
One of the virtues of mailing into Asian markets from offshore with response offshore is you can target
local individuals whose names appear on multinational lists and who are more likely to hold international credit
cards. The advantage of this is they can charge their cards in U.S. dollars allowing you to receive payment
offshore. The disadvantage of mailing from offshore in this way is the limited universe of pan-regional lists,
which restricts the roll-out potential.
Japan is interesting in this respect where up to 70% of responders (based on feedback from clients) are
willing to send cash offshore through the postal system. Many prefer to charge a JCB card rather than Amex or
Visa/Mastercard, and it's worth including a Postal Money Order option.
Cheques are commonly used in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, and can be cleared easily, but they
are virtually unknown in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China.
I was recently talking to Paul Davis of PacNet who told me some hair-raising stories about receiving
cheques in another Asian market - Indonesia. This is probably the most responsive country in Asia when you
mail into this country from offshore using multinational lists. When mailing locally, you still receive good
response but you need to budget to lose as much as 40% - 50% of your income to fraud. Wealthy Indonesians
with cheque books will send their driver to deliver a cheque to your office in payment for product. But they are
“massively outnumbered” by people who have cheques (their own or other's) but with unfunded accounts. A
recent campaign PacNet handled in Indonesia had a 40% cheque return rate!
This illustrates the need to work through a reliable third party in most Asian markets who can navigate
the idiosynchrasies of any local market on your behalf especially where collection of payment is concerned.
More Mail Which Didn't Get Delivered!
We'll be carrying some material on direct marketing in China in the next issue of MLA News, but I can't
resist passing on this little story illustrating the dangers of front-end acquisition mailings in China. I've heard
many a story of partial or complete non-delivery of bulk mail in China, but this one takes the prize. It was
reported on television and in the “Cheng Du Commercial News” -- a newspaper in Sichuan Province. A local
company spent 600,000 renmimbi on postage (and a lot more on printing and lettershopping) to mail out
100,000 direct mail pieces.
Response proved to be a long way from satisfactory (in fact a flat zero) so the company hired someone
to find out what exactly had happened to their mail. The “sleuth” followed the trail and discovered the mail had
been dumped in a waste paper yard and every single item had been sold to a local paper pulp mill for the grand
sum of 450 renmimbi (US$55)!
* * * * *
Organised Seeding of Direct Mail Campaigns May Be a Solution in Future
While on the subject of partial or non-delivery of mail, a group of 15 mail users gathered for a
“Customers Forum” on the afternoon of February 25, 2003, the day before a two-day World Mail & Express
Conference organized by Paul Jackson of Triangle Management in Singapore.
Apart from myself, mailers present included Reader's Digest, UNICEF, The Economist, McGraw-Hill,
Health & Science and others representing an annual spend on postage of US$66 million within the Asian region
alone. Our conclusions were presented the following day to postal administrations and operators attending the
Conference. These included Klaus Zumwinkel, Chairman of Deutsche Post, Theo Jongsma, CEO of Spring,
Jim Wade, Vice-President, International Business of U.S.P.S., John Modd, Managing Director, International
Services, Royal Mail Group and Carlos Silva, Chairman, Postal Operations Council of the Universal Postal
Union.
In other words, there was quite a heavyweight line-up of senior postal officials (plus 180 other
delegates) who were told that mail users were not confident at all their mail was always being fully delivered
across borders.
The prime cause of concern was the fact that more and more bulk air mail is now being delivered by
sub-contracted private postal operators outside the terminal dues based postal system.
This delivery of mail outside the postal system provides opportunities to postal administrations and
private postal operators to achieve higher profit margins. But customers are more than a little worried this may
be at their expense.
In other words, postal operators know, and postmen on the beat know, that no single piece of
promotional mail will ever be missed by addressees since they are not expecting to receive that item in the first
place. The direct mail industry is therefore particularly vulnerable and very exposed.
On the other hand, the postal industry is beginning to understand that direct mail does generate first-class
letter and parcel mail at a time when they are losing huge volumes of first-class mail to electronic
communications. Direct mail is in fact the goose that laid a large golden egg for the postal industry and they
had better not kill it!
Both Deutsche Post and Spring, to their credit, are seeding their mailings to detect and root out
weaknesses in their private delivery networks (without sharing the results with customers, of course), since they
realize that certainty of delivery is now of prime importance to mail users - because it doesn't always happen
that way!
I had the good fortune to be sitting next to Carlos Silva, Chairman of the Postal Operations Council of
the UPU at dinner who confirmed the UPU are also planning to introduce a universal system of seeding which
will constitute an independent check on service quality acceptable to both postal operators and mail users.
This may form the basis of compensation to mail users in the future when mail is proven to have been only
partially delivered. We look forward to hearing more about this, and also believe mail users should put pressure
on postal operators to become more transparent about exactly how their mail is being delivered - especially
when it is outside the postal system.
Mailers participating in the Customer Forum decided in principle to form an Asian Mail User's
Association and Alice Kijak, VP Global Operations Shared Services for Reader's Digest agreed to be the point
person with a view to linking up with a comparable group in the USA (and perhaps elsewhere).
* * * * *
Give Credit - Where Credit is Due
Before moving on from postal issues, it would be remiss and uncharitable of me not to refer to the
DMA's excellent decision to organize an “International Postal Services Forum” at their seminar center in their
New York office on May 28, 2003.
This will be exclusively for mailers only. No service providers will be allowed to attend, and no
“commercials” will be permitted by the postal operators who agree to present. The cost will be subsidized by
the postal providers who speak.
Following Al Goodloe's Publisher's “Management Forum” at the Harvard Club on April 8 and Paul
Jackson's “Mail Customers Forum” on February 25 it is good to see yet another “mailer's only” forum being
introduced.
Hypothetical periodical, catalogue and fundraiser requirements will be presented and postal
representatives asked to describe how they would respond to such mailers needs and at what price and service
levels.
* * * * *
Where Mindless Greed Prevails, Clever Scams Will Succeed...
A final word about “scams” and deceptive offers which have been bedevilling the reputation and
integrity of the direct mail industry worldwide for the past few years.
The “advance payment fee” fraud in which victims are promised large sums of money in a lottery “win”
provided they pay a small fee first (sometimes not so small) has had a good run, but consumers are at last
becoming wise. Instead of calling the contact name in the email, they are calling the police.
The Nigerian scam (known as the 4-1-9 scheme for the section of the penal code that addresses such
crimes)also keeps rolling along, and the U.S. Secret Service estimated more than US$5 Billion has been stolen
from consumers worldwide since 1992. Apparently 17 people have been killed after travelling to Nigeria to try
and recover the advance fees they have paid.
What has always astonished me is the clever, casual but meticulous way these offers are put together and
embellished with a wealth of credible and convincing detail. It is said the Nigerian letter has been the most
successful direct mail scam in history. (A lesson for all of us not in what to do - but how to do it!)
In this context, I can't help recalling Harvey Mackay's immortal comment: “When a man with money
meets a man with experience, the man with money ends up with the experience, and the man with the
experience ends up with the money”.
