WRITTEN ON March 4th, 2009 BY andrew AND STORED IN Information Technology
Tags: door drop marketing, Leaflet Distribution, Targeting, technology, TFM&A
I was in London last week and thought I’d have a look round the Technology for Marketing And Advertising exhibition at Earls Court.
I went with a completely open mind, although there were a few things that I wanted to get specific information about: Content Management Systems, Customer Relationship Management Systems, and any GIS-related marketing tools.
What was very surprising was the huge number of CRM companies there (I counted around 45). There’s certainly a lot to choose from if you’re looking for a package to keep track of your customers. I had a chat with Vicky of 3Sixty Systems who were showcasing their 3SLive product, and a long chat with Dee of Select Software, who gave me plenty of information about their Select Web Edition CRM system. Their main product is an HR tool.
Of course there’s always the open-source route: I’ve been recommended SugarCRM by at least two people (although they have said that the installation is quite involved). The advantage of an open-source platform - apart from cost - is that you have complete control over your data at all times, and you’re less exposed should something go wrong with your service provider.
So I’ve got plenty of CRM material to read at the moment.
Other highlights for me at TFM&A were the various seminars and the viral marketing companies - anyone who’s got a good idea for a cool Flash game that we could stick on our website - vaguely connected to door-drop marketing! - please let us know!
The TFM&A exhibition was firmly in the digital camp, and the talk everywhere was of how to market smarter in a recession, mainly by buying tools and data that would target and track your digital presence.
But what many people don’t realise is that the door drop industry is a far more hi-tech place these days than it ever was; just as publishers have had to adapt to an IT-driven world, so have we.
Here at LinkDirect Towers we have written software tools in-house that let us target far more precisely than ever before, reducing wastage (after all if we know someone is not going to be interested in a particular item, we don’t want to put it through their door), and therefore increasing hit rate. When combined with demographic profiling of our clients’ customers, and GPS distributor tracking, we’re very much embracing technology for marketing and advertising ourselves.
