I just looked at the presentation that you sent me. All I can say, is “WOW!” Too many agencies and companies that play in the DRTV space have let themselves get very stale over the years. In other words, too much “same old-same old” and this has, in my opinion, really hurt how DRTV is perceived by much of our industry today. What too many people have lost track of is the steady upgrading of DRTV from the old (when I ran my first call center program group for National Data) “record-tape-cassette, Ginzu Knife, Bamboo Steamer” days to where forward thinking companies are using DRTV as part of their overall media mix to connect with clients and prospects in the financial, healthcare, utilities, travel/tourism marketing (where I spent the first 12 years of my post-college life) and other higher end verticals as well as the more traditional product areas. Your presentation more than places DRTV back on the upward plane where it needs to be and recognizes its value to clients in acquiring new customers and servicing current ones.
The response world is almost a perfect parallel to the above; overwhelmed by non-marketing savvy “webheads” who think that all they have to do is to put a website and shopping cart out there to be successful. They fail to understand that, for many reasons (security being only one of them) you have got to offer a hybrid type of response and give potential clients a choice of responding via whatever response medium (web, phone, etc.) that they are most comfortable using. And, too many people lose track of the facts that:
> A phone response that interacts with a well trained live agent will always result in greater conversion and higher revenue per contact, and..
> Phone contacts are the best possible gateway to mobile marketing since (again, with a well scripted and trained agent presenting) opens the door to obtaining the FCC required “opt-in” that enables a company to both call and message a customer on his/her mobile phone.
Errol Davis & Associates
Advertising Response Specialists
www.erroldavisassociates.com
