DMA Relaunches 'Marketing Technology Council'; MTC Kicks Off with DM Days New York Session

June 5, 2007 — The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) today announced that its Marketing Technology and Internet Council will be born anew as the DMA Marketing Technology Council (MTC). With a new name and a fresh mission, this council plans to think outside the silo and focus on education, multi-discipline communication, and integration.

Commenting on the council’s relaunch, DMA Director of Special Interest Councils Terri Bartlett said, “Technology is constantly reinventing itself. So, too, is DMA’s council that focuses on marketing technology. Our ‘new-and-improved’ Marketing Technology Council is truly a forward-thinking group of direct marketing professionals whose dedicated work in this important front will benefit the entire multichannel marketing community.”

“After all, marketing technology is at the heart of multichannel direct marketing today, affecting basically every segment of the greater direct marketing community,” Bartlett said. “Marketing technology allows marketers — along with their agencies and service providers — to harness and navigate the complex and propulsive influences of today’s Knowledge Economy.”

According to Bruce Biegel, MTC chairman and senior managing director of the Winterberry Group, “The Marketing Technology Council’s mission, in short, is to help direct marketing professionals. Specifically, our new mission states that this council will serve as ‘a resource that represents, educates, and communicates the benefits of technology-enabled marketing, creating the most efficient and effective marketing processes that deliver superior shareholder and customer value.’“

Biegel said all DMA members come face-to-face with marketing technology issues, whether they know it or not, so the MTC plans to reach out to the membership, create a dialogue, and help them to understand how to solve their marketing technology issues so their marketing processes will work more efficiently. “We want to engage members in a conversation and help educate them about how they can profit from the right technology choices and successful implementations.”

“We felt that it was an appropriate time to step up and take a thought-leadership role in marketing technology due to needs expressed by Association members, and we feel that the MTC is an important first step in the dialogue that will form a lasting bridge between marketing technology disciplines and the direct marketing community as a whole,” Bartlett said. “The success of this community-wide dialogue will help determine the future path of direct marketing.”

Biegel said MTC’s primary focus — education — will take the form of member-to-member dialogues, seminars, thought-leading forums at DMA conferences, published research, and more. “These initiatives will help every direct marketing professional, all of whom could benefit from marketing technology know-how,” he said. “But the first MTC task is to help direct marketing leaders figure out what questions to ask.”

Biegel said marketing technology, broken down, involves: Sales force automation, enterprise resource planning, marketing operations management, marketing automation, data quality, digital asset management, marketing resource management, and customer relationship management technology.

The following individuals, representing a mix of marketers, marketing service providers and marketing technology leaders, spearheaded the renovation of this council:

· Bruce Biegel, Senior Managing Director, Winterberry Group

· Mike Coakley, Vice President, Epsilon

· Rod Ford, Founder & CEO, CognitiveDATA, Inc.

· Bernice Grossman, President, DMRS

· Dave Hannebrink, Senior Vice President, Print Management, Software, NewlineNoosh

· Dave Lagreca, CIO, Harte-Hanks

· Carol Meyers, Senior Vice President and CMO, Unica

· Luke McKeever, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development, Alterian

· Anthony Palella, Director, Strategic Marketing, Yahoo! Search Marketing

· Bill Rainey, MRM business Solutions Manager, Hewlett-Packard

· John Rizzi, CEO, eDialog

· Robert S. Stanley, Director, Database Marketing, Astra Zeneca Pharmaceuticals

· Sean Vanlandingham, Director, Capital One

· Robert Whitton, Research & Engineering Council of NAPL

· Christian Wright, Vice President, Database Solutions, Merkle

MTC Announces Upcoming Events

Those eager to see the new-and-improved DMA Marketing Technology Council in action can visit the panel session “The New Era of Marketing Technology: Choose the Right Solution to Drive ROI.” This panel leads conferees through the process of understanding and implementing a marketing technology plan.

The session represents the MTC’s first demonstration of its core mission — enhancing marketing technology education — and will take the stage from 1:40 to 2:35 p.m. on June 19, the first day of DM Days New York Conference & Expo, which will be held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, June 19 – 21. To register or for additional information, visit www.dmdays.org.

At DMA07 Conference & Exhibition, which will take place from October 13 to 18 at McCormick Place West in Chicago, the MTC will host a chief information officer “thought leader forum” and sponsor a post-conference intensive consisting of four marketing automation topics. The items covered will be: Enterprise Marketing Management Overview; Segmentation; Offline Campaign Execution; and Online Campaign Execution.

The MTC will also have a presence during the National Center for Database Marketing 2007 Conference, which will be held from December 10 to 12 at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

About DMA Marketing Technology Council

For information about the council, its mission, and its events, visit http://www.the-dma.org/councils/mtccouncil or contact Terri Bartlett, director of special interest councils, at tbartlett@the-dma.org or 212.768.7277, ext. 1651.

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