Last week I read about the Direct Marketing Association's plans to eliminate the List Day Conference. My first reaction? Bad move. After thinking about it for a few days I am convinced it is a step backwards for the DMA and the marketing community.
List Day was the DMA's only conference of the year devoted to educating people about mailing lists and the list business (unless you include Fast Forward, but that's another topic). Why should it be preserved? Quite simply, mailing lists are the single most important factor affecting the outcome of every direct marketing campaign and there is a general lack of understanding on how to best utilize mailing lists.
I am guessing the DMA is making a "business decision" to eliminate the conference because it is not profitable enough for their standards. Attendance at List Day is waning: since 1999, attendance has steadily fallen and had only 275 attendees last year (and probably only half of them were paid attendees).
However, the bad attendance does not justify their decision to cancel the conference. They should have tried to fix it instead of throwing it away. As far as I can tell, there was no effort to fix.
If the DMA is truly committed to helping its members to improve their marketing campaigns, they should fix the problems and hold this conference. After all, good mailing lists are at the heart of every success direct marketing campaign.
In the context of multi-channel marketing, convergence, and 'redefining ourselves', I can understand why this decision was made. There are plenty of reasons to consolidate these events, and it's not a difficult argument to support. Therefore, to be honest, I would have been tempted to and may have made the same decision if it were mine to make. However, with all of that being said -- I do believe it is an easy way out. There are so many exciting things going on with the list industry right now. Mailing lists are being refined, integrated, enhanced, and marketed like never before. The search engine marketing tactics being used to promote them is creating an entirely new and exciting trade for list managers. We should embrace that & tell the world about it -- yes, the world. We're seeing lots of internationals coming on-board in 2008 due to the presence of an web-enabled marketing platforms for lists and datacards.
Posted by: Chris DeMartine | February 07, 2008 at 10:37 AM
So if there were an opportunity to vote -- I'd definitely vote 'Yes' to bring it back!
Posted by: Chris DeMartine | February 07, 2008 at 11:47 AM