DMA President & CEO John Greco, Jr. Speaks at DMA Co- sponsored Event in Madrid

June 26, 2007 — The first International Senior Management Programme in Direct, Interactive & Relationship Marketing started its first of four days of intensive course work and team-based projects in Madrid, Spain on Monday with Direct Marketing Association (DMA) President & CEO John A. Greco, Jr. reminding the audience of students and teachers, “Today’s marketing must actually become the means of creating genuine value for people — consumers, buyers, donors and prospects — because that is who is truly in control.”

The course is being held on the grounds of the prestigious Spanish business school, ISEC, in suburban Madrid and is jointly sponsored by the renowned El Instituto de Marketing Directo y Comercio Electrónico, DMA (US), and FEDMA.

In his remarks, Greco noted that consumers today want speed, reliability; relevant and accurate information; and personal, reliable service, and good service. Multichannel marketers thus have multiple challenges. “Deploying a consistent message to customers across a spectrum of marketing media — including mail, e-mail, the Web, search, branded entertainment, interactive television, mobile technologies, and others — builds an information dialogue with customers and increases sales,” Greco told his European audience.

Referring to a soon-to-be published review of a consumer diary study, Greco noted, “American adult consumers appear to make at least one direct marketing purchase every 16 days on average. Almost 80 percent of US adults have made at least one purchase in response to direct marketing communications in the past year.”

An important conclusion from this research, Greco said, is that consumers appear to have very definite channel preferences, which indicates that while a large majority of Americans appear willing to engage with direct marketers, they do so in a limited range of channels.

Thus, “skipping one or more channels in a marketing strategy risks missing a significant number of customers who prefer only those channels,” Greco said.

After touching on current US policy issues relating to do-not-mail, data security, and spam, Greco concluded by discussing the newest challenge — and opportunity — for marketers: Web 2.0 and social community networks.

According to Greco, “Whether it’s user-generated content (now known as UGC)…or getting people talking about something in the Blogosphere…Wikis and forums are the tools of this new trade, and they require a different approach from anything we’ve ever seen before. Web 2.0 is a fast-moving environment – sometimes making the Internet boom of the late nineties look like baby steps in slow motion.”

DMA is represented at the Senior Management course in Madrid by its Vice President of Global Knowledge Network Services Charles Prescott, who is teaching direct mail excellence.

Also attending from DMA member companies as teachers are:

· Michael Lowenstein, CMC, Vice President and Senior Consultant, Harris Interactive Loyalty and DMA Seminar Instructor

· Matt Bailey, Founder & CEO of SiteLogic

· Neil Feinstein, Director Creative Strategy, True North and Visiting Professor at New York University

Prescott said, “This is our second co-operation with ICEMD, and it is the second in what we hope is a long and ever-increasing set of offerings in Spanish and international education. Our first co-operation was the wildly successful Certificate Program in Direct Marketing taught by ICEMD professors completely in Spanish at DMA 06 in San Francisco.” Prescott added, “We will repeat that course this year at DMA07 in Chicago [October 13-18], and have extended the all-Spanish language programming in the form of more advanced courses offered by the Latin American federation of DMA’s, ALMADI.”

Noting that the DMA offered a course in international direct marketing this past May for the first time ever, Prescott observed, “All of these efforts reflect the DMA’s awareness of the globalization of business and our need to ‘help make the borders go away’, which is our mandate.”

For additional information about DMA07 Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, please visit www.DMA07.org.

For additional information about DMA’s international work, contact Prescott at cprescott@the-dma.org.

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