Multichannel interaction
Companies today have to deliver a consistent experience across channels and within their messaging, too. Additionally, they have to balance those channels. Businesses also need to generate an environment for interaction, not just send messages. This means that marketers need to understand what role their brands’ messages and communication play in customers’ lives. To do so they need to look across the entire customer experience. “Be everywhere your customers want you to be,” Osborn said.

Branding
There is an increased focus on lead generation activities and customer acquisition today, but branding is not taking a back seat. “Direct is the new branding,” he said. “Direct marketing was all about numbers, but now it also leverages and builds the brand.”

The notion of a brand has evolved, Osborn said. It was a promise of quality, but now it’s much more experiential. It’s not what you, as the company, say you are; it’s what customers believe you to be. Consequently, marketers should be using direct marketing to remind customers of their past experiences, as well as what they can expect from future experiences.

Email
One challenge that marketers face is email burnout. There are too many of the same types of emails being sent. Today marketers need to consider whether they should be narrowcasting or broadcasting–who do I want to reach versus how many.

They also need to consider how to get their email to stand out. There’s a great deal of untapped potential, Osborn said. Service-oriented email like transpromo is fertile ground. When you send a purchase confirmation email, for example, include a cross-sell suggestion. If a customer online clicks the gift wrap button, ask the occasion and offer an opt-in email reminder for the following year. Don’t make customers do all the work; offer a service that gives them a reason to come back and do more business with you. “The difference between spam and email is value and relevance,” he said.

Online 
In the past many marketers said it was cheaper online to get impressions. “But we’ve reached a point where most of the online ads are junk, and most advertisers don’t know how to buy online,” Osborn said. For example, should marketers buy based on subscriber profile or behavioral targeting?

It’s time to figure out search, banners, and online communities, as well as how to allocate resources to online touchpoints. Ideally, customers will tell you. If a company uses a multichannel approach for acquisition, for example, customers’ primary response channels will show their preferred communication and interaction channels. Or, take a traditional direct marketing approach: measure ROI; take the high ROI initiatives and expand them; take the low ROI initiatives and kill them; if something is on the borderline, consider moving the dollars elsewhere.