Editor's Picks: 2012's Top Direct Marketing Tips for Each 'Target Marketing' Editor

This is part of a wider direct marketing truth that Denny Hatch hits on whenever he warns against "me text," or scolds an online marketer for poor website design: The easier, more inviting, more optimized you make the experience for your customers in every channel, the more likely they are to buy your products.

It's not new thinking, direct marketers have known this for decades, but marketers are relearning it for the digital age. Most conversions—from email sign-up to purchase—create the opportunity to market to that customer again. That's the key to lifetime value, and it's worthwhile sacrificing a piece of information early in order to get them into your sales funnel and loyalty programs (and you can try to collect that info again later in the lifecycle).