Reach overload actually can be more detrimental. Say Marketer X has a product for newborns. It tasks its direct/e-mail, print and interactive teams to plan the media—all separately. All three teams come back with targeted plans, and all three have incorporated a buy from the same major source, the fictional Momco. The combined plans could call for five pages of print ads in Momco's publication over three months, a mail campaign to 50 million subscribers of the publication, an e-mail drop to another 50 million online subscribers and targeted banners placed on Momco's site. And each team could have paid premium rates, because none would have been able to leverage the buy. This isn't optimal for anybody—even Momco (at some point its customers are going to hit media overload and stop paying attention). There's got to be a better way.
And there is. As a list professional, my first request to a client is to see its prior mail history and results. My second request is to see the media plans from any and all other channels it is marketing into, even if the results are poor or the marketer is not using that channel anymore. Sometimes you can turn "We tried a banner on that site and it didn't work" into "Let's try mailing to them instead" and achieve success for the marketer.
Now, I'm not suggesting that media planning should be a big "group share." There's a reason there are specialists and experts in each channel. But significant media partners can benefit greatly from core strategy and directional updates. And most importantly, so can marketers.
Stefanie Pont is managing partner and founder of Pont Media Direct, a direct marketing consultancy and list brokerage firm in Norwalk, Conn. She has more than 20 years of direct marketing, list brokerage and management experience, and was named Direct Marketing Association's List Leader of the Year in 2006. Pont can be reached at stefanie@listgoddess.com.
