Lately, I have been enjoying updating my status on Twitter. This type of microblogging is perfect for me to keep my friends and a casual passersby what I am doing. But regardless of who is reading, it is a very therapeutic activity. Sometimes I just need to remark on some insignificant thought, love, or annoyance but it just doesn’t warrant a blog post. But I don’t want to subject my RSS subscribers to daily drivel, I want to talk about things of significance.

Microblogging can give you considerable insight into how people think about your brand. By searching for posts using your company name or product as keywords you can hear what people really think. Read more…

The 80/20 Rule is something that every direct marketer knows (or at least should know). The basic principle is this: 20% of your customers represent 80% of your sales.

According to Wikipedia:

“The principle was suggested by management thinker Joseph M. Juran. It was named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population. The assumption is that most of the results in any situation are determined by a small number of causes.”

Ok. So what? Why do we need to know this? In my experience over 10 years of creating direct marketing programs I have never come across a budget that I thought was enough. It is no big surprise. Marketers know what captures attention, drives action, and produces results. It tends to be a scenario like: a dimensional piece to break the clutter with an offer that is too amazing to pass up with a response device that is incredibly personalized all sent to a list made up of perfect leads. That may be every marketers hope for a perfect campaign but they all add up to moolah and let’s face it, not gonna happen. Read more…

We all get it. Some more than others. It floods your inbox on an hourly basis. It frequently makes assumptions of your sexual inadequacies, your compassion for African widows, and your quest for cheap drugs. It’s called SPAM and it is a pure volume game.

Spammers do not care about quality, they care about numbers. To even assume there is truly a personal touch behind the “Send” button is ignorant. This is automation in the truest sense of the word. How else can you explain why they very rarely contain messages that are grammatically correct, technologically competent, visually interesting, and appropriate for you.

It is pretty hard to take seriously when my wife gets emails to enlarge her penis. It’s a nuisance no doubt, but here’s a shocker:

You should read them. Read more…

A new research from Forrester Research this week said that by the end of 2008, there will be 1 Billion PCs in use worldwide. It took around 27 years to reach the billion mark. But it will take only 5 more years to double that number. This number is cited as being achieved due to “advancing technology, lower prices, and global demand on the part of a technology-aware population.”

Finally, it is estimated that emerging countries like China, India, Brazil, and Russia will account for more than 775 million new PCs in that time. Just sounds like a lot of computers in this world. You might be saying to yourself, “Big deal. I’m not in the tech industry. It won’t affect me.”

Not so fast. Regardless of your field of business, there are two reasons why you do not need to care:
Read more…