Guest Post: Black Friday? Cyber Monday? It’s Binge Discounting All This Week by Paul Miller

Who knows where we’ll be a year from now, but at least for this season of store and online retail bargains, the killer sales are already going on. Although there will still be big store sales this Friday and probably even bigger ones online next Monday, the big retailers already began to duke it out for the lowest prices earlier this month.

50 best multichannel direct marketing tips of 2009 (from All About ROI Magazine)

The November issue of All About ROI (formerly Catalog Success) Magazine is on the newsstands (if they even exist anymore). This months cover story is 50 Best Tips of 2009. Check out the article here.

My blog is singing happy birthday to me! (and a contest to win for you!)

Dear friends and readers. Exactly one year ago today the Gilbert Direct Marketing blog was born. Frankly I never expected it to take off the way it did. I want to offer you my readers my sincerest thank you for turning this blog into one of the top rated (99th percentile, based on Grader by Hubspot) direct and social media blogs.

Your comments, both public and private have kept me going.

So here is a contest for you. Winner gets a free one hour review of either your linkedin profile, or your own social media sites. Guess how many page views I have had in the last year. Closest the the exact number of page views wins. Post your answer to the comments below to win.

USPS “No 2010 Rate Increase”: The Loophole and a Call to Action

Just when I thought it was safe to believe in the U.S. Postal Service, I find out this lovely tidbit of information: Despite Postmaster General John Potter’s grand statement (or was it a grandstanding statement) that there’d be no postal rate increase in 2010, there’s a giant loophole.

Dear Mr. Postmaster General, you’ve started a trend… but…

A week ago the USPS Postmaster General sent out a memo stating there would be no postal increase for direct mailers in 2010. We must make our voice heard and hold their feet to the fire to keep the direct and catalog marketing business moving. Therefore I wrote the letter below to the USPS. I urge you to send in your own letter, or use/modify my letter to suit your needs. The Postmaster General’s Contact information is below…

Dying to Get Your Offer (aka: dead men still get mail)

Another kind of “do not mail” database:

Don’t mailers know they’re wasting money? Direct mail costs enough these days. So much so that it doesn’t make sense to mail someone who can be easily suppressed from a mailing list.

Kudos, an open letter (and a warning) to the USPS Postmaster General (spread this around)

Over the years I’ve been super vocal about my dislike for the U.S. Postal Service and its less-than-forward-thinking bureaucracy. When it slammed direct marketers with a 20 percent postal increase back in 2007, I went (pun intended) postal on it in my Catalog Success Magazine Column… I have to applaud the USPS for its announcement last week that there would not be a postal rate increase in 2010…But along with my kudos to our Postmaster and the USPS, I also want to put them on notice…

BREAKING NEWS: US Postal Service makes a bold statement: No 2010 postal increases!

US Postal Service makes a bold statement: No 2010 postal increases!

BERNHART SURVEY: Digital & direct marketing employment outlook shows improvement for 4th quarter 2009

With the drumbeat of layoffs diminishing only faintly, the latest Bernhart Associates Quarterly Digital and Direct Marketing Employment Report shows digital and direct marketers are poised in the current fourth quarter (Q4) to add to payrolls for the third consecutive quarter.

Guest Post: Social media – Peeling past the hyperbole to learn valuable lessons by Carol Worthington-Levy

On whose scale is that either measurable or successful? D’oh! It’s smoke and mirrors – our own industry’s media falling into the same tepid pool as the bigger media has, by expanding stories into big headlines that exaggerate, but don’t really state the truth. While I have respect for what our media is up against, I don’t respect their not culling through PR releases to find out what the real truth is before printing it.