Introduction to Modern, Integrated Direct Marketing

This new two-day course will give newcomers to our industry a stunning introduction to the breadth and scope of how modern integrated direct marketing works. Taught solely by experienced Fellows of the IDM, all of whom are leading experts in the profession, this unique workshop provides the best introduction available in today's complex profession.

Course benefits »
Who should attend? »
Full course programme »

Key learnings »
Personal mentor »
Speakers »

IDM Corporate Member Companies
If your company is a corporate member of the IDM you can book places on this course for the special rate of £499. To obtain this price please email coursebookings@theidm.com with the delegate's details. For more information about corporate membership click here.

How will you benefit?

Delegates will be tutored in the latest thinking behind customer relationship management across multiple channels, integrating digital strategies into the mix, the legal requirements, the new metrics businesses are using, and the changes in consumer attitudes, behaviour and power.

Who should attend?

ALL newcomers to the direct marketing profession, from clients, agencies and suppliers or more experienced marketers who are transferring across to direct marketing.

Key learning outcomes

Delegates will receive a comprehensive grounding in:

• How modern, integrated direct marketing actually works for major brands today
• How to identify the key competences and skills you need to develop to become the complete professional marketer, to boost your career
• An insight into how the key marketing services, agencies, media and suppliers fit together, their roles, and how to manage and work with them
• An expert briefing on the latest developments in digital media
• Why direct, data and digital strategies are at the heart of most successful brands today

Post-course continued learning, personal mentor

At the end of the course a personal mentor will be assigned to you for one year, to advise you on your career development. In addition all delegates will receive:

• One-year’s free affiliate membership giving you access to all IDM member benefits and services (For further details click here)
• Valuable information pack covering the industry road-map including access to 5 Business Performance Award winning case histories.

Course programme

Part 1 - How modern integrated direct marketing works

Direct marketing as part of mainstream marketing
Gain an insight into the changes in marketing over the past few decades. See how digital marketing is emerging as the marketing of tomorrow and how the buying power is shifting from the businesses to the customers. Appreciate the scope and scale of modern direct marketing and its capacity to manage customers across multiple channels with a single customer view.

• How marketing has evolved over the past decade
• The inevitable rise and rise of digital media
• Who really controls the buying process in today’s consumer market
• The five major challenges facing B2B marketers
• Why and how modern, integrated direct marketing is playing an increasing important role in marketing
• Are companies really “customer centric”
• How direct and digital marketing can build and develop brands
• Why data strategies are now a Board priority
• The importance of the “customer experience” and “customer journey”
• Managing relationships across multi-channels to present a single customer view
• Why direct marketing is a global business
• Why the four key principles – targeting, control, interaction, and continuity are crucial
• Three different business models
• Case histories which illustrate the above

Customer centric planning
In this session you will learn what skills you need to become a competent strategic planner. What makes a good strategic plan and how to evaluate it. Why budgeting/forecasting is crucial to “accountable” direct marketing.

• What a good strategic marketing plan contains
• Template for strategic marketing planning
• Three types of planning- budgeting, forecasting and strategic
• Benefits of a good strategic plan
• Importance of internal audits and competition analysis
• Five criteria for setting objectives
• Ways to evaluate different strategic options
• Using KPIs, useful P&L tools, and the budget
• Zero-based budgeting and lifetime value analysis

Data strategies in today’s business
The purpose of this session is to highlight the central role data plays in today’s marketing planning, both for acquisition and retention. It will highlight the key things you need to learn about your database, how to develop and manage it, as well as the crucial issue of data quality.

• The importance of being data literate in today’s marketing
• Strategic role of customer databases in planning and setting communication objectives
• Setting up a customer database, structure, functions, data sources, software, processes
• Data strategy, data quality and organisational culture
• Integrating website and contact centre data
• The importance of volunteered data
• Using data from third party sources
• Geodemographic and lifestyle issues

Customer insights and the role of profiling and segmentation
This session will show students how the combined use of classical market research techniques combined with the enormous storage capacity for customer information can combine to produce customer insights into their behaviour including...

• Why do companies have customer insight departments
• Defining “customer insights” as research + data
• The role of marketing research in consumer behaviour
• Evaluating and selecting the research technique – focus groups, phone, and on and offline questionnaires
• Developing value focussed propositions
• How to interpret and use the results of your profiling
• Examples of customer insights from leading brands

How modern direct marketing builds brands
The purpose of this session is to emphasise the important role brands play in today’s marketplace, the reasons, and how brands can be built using direct marketing techniques alone. Why all communications should be brand conscious and deliver the "brand experience".

• What is branding?
• Why brands are so important in today’s cluttered marketplace
• The history and leading brands today
• Researching and developing competitive new brands
• Brands and financial assets
• The brand personality
• Measuring brand equity
• Building brands through response and optimising integration

Integrated marketing communications and media planning
The purpose of this session is to open the students' eyes to the enormous diversity of media available to today’s marketer, both online and offline. To highlight which media works best for which marketing tasks and the benefits of developing a tested contact strategy.

• Why marcoms became disintegrated
• Getting organised for media-neutral planning
• Planning, scheduling, registering and buying media
• Unique characteristics of addressable media (direct mail, email, fax, phone, SMS)
• A review of all existing offline media
• The principal digital communication tools – online advertising, search, email, viral, SMS and digital interactive TV
• Developing seamless on and offline communications

The power of retention and development of customers
Marketers have two primary tasks – acquiring and keeping customers. Customer retention is crucial in today’s marketplace. On average it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. This session highlights many of the most successful ways to keep, develop and win back customers.

• What customer loyalty is and is not
• Understanding the customer journey and loyalty drivers
• Using LTVs to drive differentiated propositions
• Why CRMs bubble burst
• Setting up a basic retention programme
• Using real time customer data to customise/personalise websites and contact centre interactions
• Assessing value of club cards
• An example of Tesco’s club card

Producing great on and offline creativity
The purpose of this session is to inspire students by the great and imaginative creative work that can be produced to engage customers. At the same time, it will highlight the basics of good creativity and the importance of briefing and evaluation.

• How to recognise great creative ideas
• Why direct and digital marketing can build brands
• Positioning – securing the right niche in your customers’ mind
• How creative works in different media- on and offline
• What makes a good creative brief and why
• Why tone, feel and style are vital to brand making sales
• Developing strong propositions and offers
• What gets attention, builds interest, creates desire, instils conviction and generates action
• Where and how personalisation can be effective
• Examples of award winning direct marketing, press, inserts, DRTV and interactive media
• Making the web work both in copy and design
• How to judge and evaluate creative work
• Conventional and digital printing techniques
• Selecting, managing and buying direct marketing services

Evaluating your direct marketing programmes
This session is about the mechanics of running campaigns from briefing suppliers to fund analysis. It will cover the basic metrics of direct marketing and the emerging metrics of digital marketing.

• What’s a customer worth
• Evaluating campaign performance using AMC, yield and ROI
• How to calculate lifetime value (LTV)
• Understanding the digital metrics
• Interpreting your test results

How to stay legal, decent and honest
All students need a basic understanding of the legislation and codes of practice. This session will particularly cover the issues of permission marketing, data protection and privacy issues.

• What you need to know about the legislation
• ASA guidelines, comparative advertising and compliance
• Data and privacy
• Digital – the law relating to websites, email and SMS

Part 2 – Working with the suppliers to make it happen

Working with agencies

• The changing role of agencies
• How agencies are set up – key departments
• Working with an agency
• Selecting and evaluating agencies
• Commission versus project fees
• A review of the agency scene

Working with the media

• Overview of the UK media scene and media owners you will need
• How to plan, buy and negotiate with media owners
• A review of the principal media
• Specialist media buying agencies

Working with Digital Media

• Overview of Digital media
• The new digital suppliers on the block
• The future of Digital media

Speakers include

Marc Nohr F IDM, Managing Partner, Kittcat Nohr Alexander Shaw
Marc worked in television and journalism before discovering the agency world. He started as an account handler, then moved into creative. He became Executive Creative Director of Burnett Direct Marketing (winning 30 industry awards in 4 years), before moving on to become Deputy Managing Director and then Managing Director of the Group, which he left in 2001 to find talented partners and start his own agency. During that time he also helped found and float one of the UK's first digital download music companies. He is a Fellow of the IDM, a past board member of the DMA and for 1999-2003 was Chairman of the DMA Awards. He has also served on many industry awards panels including Campaign, D&AD, Echo and PM. He is a regular contributor to broadsheets and industry magazines, and was one of the founding columnists on the Financial Times' Creative Business section. He is currently a monthly columnist for Marketing Direct magazine and has spoken at marketing conferences around the world. He also runs training seminars internationally for brands on a variety of subjects (recently including "Managing the creative process" for Orange in the UK, and "Developing motivating marketing strategies" for Energiser across Europe) and is a qualified Master Practitioner in NLP. He serves on the Superbrands Business Council and was recently placed at number 1 in Marketing Direct’s Power 100.

Mike Colling F IDM, Managing Director, MC&C
Mike has been a media man for 20 years, first dipping into direct marketing in the late 80s whilst media director of Laing Henry. A DRTV pioneer, he was behind the first insurance DRTV advertising, for AA Autoquote, and the first successful charity DRTV, for NSPCC.

Giles Rhys Jones F IDM, Digital Strategy Director, Ogilvy

His career has spanned advertising, digital, direct marketing, media and marketing consultancy. Giles helped create Agency Republic, delivering campaigns that crossed wireless, traditional and digital channels, winning them digital agency of the year twice.

Tod Norman F IDM, Planning Director, Watson Phillips Norman
Tod worked in marketing research, above the line advertising, and strategic brand consultancy, before moving into direct marketing as a Brand Planner at BHWG (now Proximity). This was followed by three years at Zalpha, the strategic consultancy within WWAV Rapp Collins London, where he was head of brand planning for all WWAV agencies. In 2003, Tod left to set up Watson Phillips Norman with John Watson and Maria Phillips. At WPN, Tod has focused on delivering ‘muscular’ brand planning. In short, this involves identifying the aspects of a client’s brand construct which drive profitable behaviour, rather than just admiration, affection, or aspiration.

Caroline Worboys F IDM, CEO, Broadsystem
Caroline has over 18 years experience within the marketing services industry. In the early 1990's Caroline set-up HDM Worboys which was one of the first outsourced database marketing companies in the UK. In 2000 HDM Worboys was acquired by News International to provide the central pillar from which to develop the marketing services of Broadsystem. In September 2002 Caroline was appointed MD of Broadsystem. Her tenure has been marked by many major achievements Caroline is considered by her colleagues & industry peers to be a leader within the marketing services industry. Caroline is a Trustee of the Institute of Director Marketing and was recently voted as the 5th most important UK Data Leader by Marketing Direct.

Paul McCarthy Hon F IDM
Paul is a seasoned marketing professional with over 25 years strategic marketing and management experience in the UK and internationally. He started his career on the client side – culminating at American Express as Marketing Director for the UK Card Division – and then launched two top ten UK marketing agencies: McCarthy Cosby Paul and McCarthy Bull Oliver. Latterly, he launched the consulting arm of The Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM). His sector experience extends across a broad range from automotive and consumer entertainment through financial services and IT to telecommunications, travel and utilities. Paul was a founder member of The IDM and has been on the exam board for seven years. He was elected to Honorary Fellowship in 1999. He was also appointed to the Board of the Royal Mail’s Marketing Centre of Excellence and sat on the DMA Agency Council.

Brian Thomas Hon F IDM
Brian is formerly Managing Director of Ogilvy & Mather Direct and Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, author of the Royal Mail Guide to Direct Mail for Small Businesses and the new textbook Direct Marketing in Practice, is a highly experienced and enthusiastic direct marketing consultant and trainer. Over the course of 30 years in advertising and marketing, he has planned and controlled more than 700 direct marketing campaigns and held senior positions in the likes of ICI and GUS. Brian brings Complete Direct Marketing delegates the benefit of this wealth of experience and offers them scores of tips, tricks and techniques. He was named IDM Educator of the Year in 1999 and is a Honorary Fellow of the Institute.

Course fee includes all tuition, comprehensive manual, lunch and light refreshments.

• IDM home
• Training home
• Marketing training
  courses by subject
• Marketing training
  courses by date
• Digital (internet) marketing booster series
• Digital (internet) marketing expertise
• Direct marketing expertise
• Database marketing expertise
• Creative expertise
• IDM Academy
• Save on IDM training
• The delegate experience