A Good Offer Squandered

Monday, March 22, 2004 – Denny, our production artist, has performed yeoman’s duty in helping me prepare for my appearance next week at the 18th Annual New England Meetings Industry Conference and Exposition in Boston. He’s scanned dozens of direct mail packages for me, each one illustrating one of the points I’ll be making in my presentation, “The Shoestring Secrets of Well-Heeled Direct Marketers.” It’s a thankless job, all this R&D leading up to a speaking gig — but the extra effort now makes everything that much easier come show time. A couple of the packages I’ll be sharing with my audience speak to the importance of your mailing list — that is, a bad offer to a good list is better than a good offer to a bad list. Case in point: I received a letter in the mail recently that told me that I had been chosen to receive an application for the 2004 National American Miss Massachusetts Pageant. Now if I’m a “girl with dreams,” as the copy on the outside envelope so dramatically puts it, I’m all over this offer (no comments from the peanut gallery, by the way)! The list wasn’t bad, per se. Someone neglected to do a gender select, that’s all. The truth is that my step-daughter, Sophie, is a high school cheerleader, and she subscribes to American Cheerleader magazine. But I paid for the subscription, and took it out in my name. Clearly, the National American Miss organization used the American Cheerleader list — the whole kit and caboodle — overlooking the fact that it might contain at least a few errant records. Not a big deal. But a perfectly good example of a good offer squandered.

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