How can these challenges be overcome?

Unlike many, I am very optimistic and strongly believe 2009 will bring many opportunities for the direct marketing industry. Not only for agencies and consultancies that plan and undertake marketing activity; but for the whole spectrum of organisations that work with these agencies undertaking highly targeted marketing.

In order to witness their full potential it will be very important for companies to embrace activity that will not only drive growth from existing business, but provide new prospects. This may indeed sound basic, but I am certain there will be many businesses reading this that still undertake blanket marketing activity, hoping that if you throw enough some will stick!

Unlocking the true potential of your client base is a fundamental marketing exercise. Moreover, given the current economic climate and the importance of securing business stability, retaining and growing existing clients will be vital as the acquisition of new business becomes far harder.

In order to produce successful marketing strategies insight must be derived from customer information. Unfortunately many corporate businesses are applying the same analytical techniques such as "recency, frequency models" for their business customers as their consumer customers which often produce skewed and inaccurate results.

The business community is very different and to provide powerful marketing strategies it is important to link information held at site and company level. Once linked together analytical techniques need to be applied, such as developing a share of wallet model.