With the support of Edentify (thanks guys, super fast turn-around on your end) we did a little live poll this morning at the ADMA Data Day 2009 asking a couple of hundred Australian direct marketers the following two questions:

Poll 1: Thinking of yourself as a consumer which of the following channels would you prefer companies to use when communicating with you (select only one)?

Poll 2: Putting your direct marketer head back on, which is the most effective direct marketing channel for your company (select only one)?

The below results are only very top-line and would most likely differ by industry and product (i.e. price) but it's comforting to see that a great majority of people would like to be communicated with via email and that marketers also think email is a very effective channel that works for them (same goes for DM). More of a concern is that is seems that no-one really wants a phone call but quite a few marketers consider phone calls an effective direct marketing channel.

If all this sounds like a familiar challenge to you and you'd like to know how data and analytics can help to select the most suitable channel at the right point in time or just want to contribute to industry best practice then please join the new ADMA Data & Analytics council by emailing councils@adma.com.au.

Check out the Edentify Bubble Toolbox yourself here 
http://www.edentify.com.au/

According to a recent eMarketer article people are using social media in all sorts of situations but what's the weirdest place you've used Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or any other social site before (and we want to see some crazy 'other' responses)?

Take our poll now (and be honest):
http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2197682/

Read the original eMarketer article here:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007352

Check out last night's course presentation for the ADMA Digital Certificate in Marketing on the 4 major data categories (campaign, customer, competitor and consumer data) and what the data in each category can be used for.

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Follow the below link to add or delete interests to your Google profile so you only see ads that are relevant to you. Why is not every publisher or online retailer offering something similar? The technology certainly is not rocket science and aside from increasing trust with customers by being open about profiling and putting them in control it has also the potential to significantly increase response and conversion rates!

http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

Interest areas you can chose from are: Animals, Arts & Humanities, Automotive, Beauty & Personal Care, Business, Computers & Electronics, Entertainment, Finance & Insurance, Food & Drink, Games, Home & Garden, Industries, Internet, Lifestyles, Local, News & Current Events, Photo & Video, Real Estate, Recreation, Reference, Science, Shopping, Social Networks & Online Communities, Society, Sports,. Telecommunications, Travel.

Awesome McKinsey article on the changing purchase funnel which really isn't a funnel anymore after all, it's more like a circle. The implications for brand advertising/equity and the role of search in the buying process are massive.

Watch the animation here.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/wrapper.aspx?ar=2373&story=true&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mckinseyquarterly.com%2fThe_consumer_decision_journey_2373%3fpagenum%3d1%23interactive&pgn=code09_exhibit

Read the original article here.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_consumer_decision_journey_2373

Below are the slides we presented at the recent ADMA Data Day outlining the different data touch points a consumer has during any given marketing campaign. You can see how all the different data points really feed into each other to form one holistic view and none should be seen in isolation. Especially online insights are often underutilized when it comes to using them to influence offline parts of a campaign.

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