Meeting Drayton Bird
I recently met marketing guru – Drayton Bird. He led a packed seminar at the recent International Direct Marketing Fair at Earls Court. His presentation took us back to the basics of commonsense direct marketing. Our role as marketers, he said, is simply to find, and then keep, a customer. It’s all about finding ways of developing relationships with customers. Dell, he argued, is ruining their brand through their continual focus on discounting.
Digital marketers are failing to learn the fundamentals of direct marketing. He put this down to complacency created by the low cost of digital marketing channels. “Email is an incredibly cheap medium compares to direct mail. There is a tremendous cost advantage which means you don’t have to try as hard. His two key rules are: one, test everything. Two, if in doubt refer to rule one. There are no certainties, no short-cuts, no set route map for success. Test and then test again.