The full text of the response follows below.

Dear DMA Voting Member:

You may have received an email from a member of the DMA Board of Directors, Gerry Pike, expressing his concern about the state of our Association and soliciting your proxy for the upcoming Annual Business Meeting. Unfortunately, his message may raise some confusion about the governance of DMA, and requires a clear statement of the facts so that you can make an appropriate decision about your proxy.

As an Association of members who represent the finest communicators anywhere, DMA holds great respect for the communications process, including criticism and dissent.  Listening to everyone’s voice is essential to building a strong and vibrant community, and a key aspect of managing an effective trade association. However, when someone communicates partial information and engages in misrepresentation and innuendo, a full review of the facts is needed.

In 2006, Mr. Pike was nominated by the DMA Board’s Committee of Nominations and elected by DMA members to a three-year term on the Board of Directors. This year, the Committee of Nominations, after reviewing a list of candidates, did not re-nominate Mr. Pike for a second term. Every other sitting member of the Board whose first term was ending was re-nominated for a second term. Recently, the committee’s recommended slate of candidates was sent to you for consideration.

Mr. Pike’s charges are wide-ranging and general, but a few issues stand out as demanding clarification. First among them is any suggestion that DMA and its professional staff have done anything other than work hard to continue delivering the value most important to members during the unprecedented and tumultuous economic changes of the past year. Staff reductions were painful but prudent, and despite the cuts we have managed to aggressively pursue many opportunities to not only survive but to thrive when the economy moderates. Chief among these are a major global curriculum for direct marketing education and professional development, our new DMA Certified Marketing Professional program kicking off at DMA09. We have also taken the leading role in a broad coalition of marketing and advertising organizations to develop self-regulation of online behavioral advertising in the face of a major governmental threat to continued growth of Internet marketing. Moreover, the downturn and staff reductions have not restrained any of our environmental efforts on behalf of the direct marketing community. In fact, we have re-doubled them with our new Environmentally Responsible Marketing certification.

With regard to executive compensation, again Mr. Pike only provides limited information and tellingly omits salient points. The Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors reviews and approves the president's compensation with close attention to comparable organizations. The Committee believes the terms of compensation have been appropriate in years when the business was growing rapidly.  When the current recession took hold and the impact on DMA became apparent, the Compensation Committee froze all executive compensation, including that of the president, effective months ago.  Mr. Pike does not mention this although he was aware of it as a member of the Board’s Executive Committee (EC).  Mr. Pike also neglects to mention that he never voiced concern about compensation at a meeting of the Board of Directors, or of the EC. In fact, it was his colleagues on the Compensation Committee, all of whom continue to serve on the Board, who properly and responsibly ensured sound governance with respect to executive compensation.

DMA management operates with an "open door" policy and reports regularly to both the Board of Directors and the EC.  In addition, DMA financial performance is monitored closely by the Board’s Finance Committee, which like the EC, has been holding meetings more frequently over the past year than is customary due to the unusually volatile economy.

DMA communicates regularly with members on all issues and at times some members have even suggested that we err on the side of sending too much information.  We have made significant efforts to be responsive to such comments, and to strike a balance that satisfies the majority of you.  It is simply untrue to say that DMA has cut off communication with members, or that we have cloaked any intentions in any way. We have been clear that DMA is taking advantage of this reorganization period to intensify our focus on all the interactive marketing channels – online to offline.  We are working to help members take advantage of tremendous opportunities growing from a multichannel, integrated and intelligent approach to the direct marketing process.

There are many other points open to discussion in Mr. Pike’s email, but he offers no prescriptive actions. Accordingly, I urge you to send back your signed voting proxy to the Chairman or Secretary, or to vote directly by signing and returning the ballot enclosed in the recent DMA ballot mailing. As always, all voting members are welcome to attend the annual business meeting for the actual vote, being held this year at the US Grant Hotel in San Diego on October 18, 2009.

Sincerely,

John A. Greco, Jr. President & CEO DMA	Kelly B. Browning Chairman of the Board DMA