Like their consumer colleagues, business-to-business list professionals see lots of opportunities for growth, even though mailers have to be cautious about obstacles like
Can Spam.
In Direct's B-to-B list roundtable, participants talked about how their industry has expanded by evolving and going that extra step to serve clients. There was a healthy sense of competition in the room, but an overwhelming feeling that everyone needs to work together to survive |
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Castle : How is business now in the B-to-B field and what do you expect to see in the next year?
DUNN: There are a lot of opportunities and challenges in terms of pulling data together so we can go deeper and help businesses get more information more quickly. If I were a young man entering the direct marketing field, I'd want to be on the B-to- B side. There's a lot more room for growth, the margins are a lot better and it's a better place to be.
SCHWEDELSON: We are definitely seeing a lot of growth, especially over the course of the next 12 to 24 months, based on what a lot of mailers are telling us. We're really starting to see some of those mailers in categories that had not been doing so well-for example, technology- come back with greater volumes and more long-term planning. And some of the publishing categories too. There are a lot of positive signs.
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SANCHEZ: I would agree with that. From our perspective, what's happening that's really positive is a strong synergy between online and offline, particularly in B-to-B. When e-mail lists first came on the market, you really had a big separation on sourcing. The offline people weren't sure they wanted to put their e-mail lists on the market and the online people really didn't have quality products. What we're seeing now are companies that have really strong cooperative strategic initiatives. They're putting out good, quality products.
SCHWARTZ: I like the optimism in what I hear. I tend to find at roundtables that the air is always more optimistic than when we sit one-on-one and discuss what's going on. I think the market definitely has improved significantly from last year. I think we all are still reacting somewhat to challenges from 2001 on in our industry. Our discipline really felt it pretty badly and so as mailers started to return to greater activity, it bolstered our spirits. But I think we are greatly affected today by macroeconomics and what's going on politically, so I find myself jumping from both extremes. On one level I'm working very hard with clients who are struggling with their B-to-B prospecting, in [areas like] the IT market area, clients who are very concerned about a lot of the new regulations and obstacles. E-mail is a wonderful medium, but we're all receiving so much e-mail and so much sparn that the numbers very often just aren't there. It's hard to make it work. I'm relatively optimistic, but we have a lot of challenges.
Opportunities and Challenges (Cont'd)
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