DIRECT MARKETING ASSOCIATION AND MERKLE ANNOUNCE BRAND NEW INTEGRATED CUSTOMER MARKETING SEMINAR

Learn Methods to Optimize the Customer Portfolio & Enhance Business Value

New York, NY, April 20, 2009 — The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) today announced a brand new seminar in cooperation with Merkle, a database marketing agency. The two-day seminar entitled, “Integrated Customer Marketing — Optimizing the Customer Portfolio to Maximize Shareholder Value” will be presented by David Williams, president and CEO of Merkle, May 21-22, at DMA’s Seminar Center in New York City.

DMA’s comprehensive educational offerings always offer attendees in-depth knowledge from impressive direct marketing experts, and this seminar is no different. David Williams, along with a team of senior Merkle executives, will present the concepts and approach behind Integrated Customer Marketing (ICM), a new optimization framework designed to help companies become more customer-centric. This offering is another strategic course marketers need to attend in order to develop strategies that optimize consumer behavior with brands, as well as uncover meaningful insights from campaigns to drive ROI results.

The goal of ICM is to inform the total customer experience — from strategic lifestyle management and marketing mix optimization, to comprehensive program development and the optimization of individual campaigns. Here, attendees will learn how to bridge customer, product, and marketing strategies.

Merkle’s experienced leadership team will explain how companies can re-engineer their customer marketing strategy and business process to actively manage customer and prospect interactions across sales, marketing, and services throughout the customer lifecycle. Attendees will come away with an increased awareness regarding their customer interactions, and will learn how to start optimizing marketing programs based on this key insight.

For more information or to register for the ICM seminar, please visit http://www.the-dma.org/seminars/integrateddatabase/.

About Merkle

Merkle is one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing database marketing agencies. For more than 20 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. By combining a complete range of marketing, technical, analytical and creative disciplines, Merkle works with clients to design, execute and evaluate Integrated Customer Marketing™ programs. With more than 1,000 employees, the privately held corporation is headquartered near Baltimore in Columbia, Maryland with additional offices in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Little Rock, Philadelphia, Seattle and Hagerstown, Md. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.

About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

The Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) is the leading global trade association of businesses and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques. DMA advocates standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the end-to-end direct marketing process. Founded in 1917, DMA today represents more than 3,400 companies from dozens of vertical industries in the US and 48 other nations, including half of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations.

In 2008, marketers — commercial and nonprofit — spent $176.9 billion on direct marketing, which accounted for 52.1 percent of all ad expenditures in the United States. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures generated approximately $2.057 trillion in incremental sales. Last year, direct marketing accounted for approximately 10 percent of total US gross domestic product. Also, there are today 1.6 million direct marketing employees in the US. Their collective sales efforts directly support 9.3 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 10.9 million US jobs.

The Power of Direct: Relevance. Responsibility. Results.

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