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BOOK OF THE MONTH - "Direct Marketing Strategies and Tactics..."

Wine and software sometimes improve with age, and time is a good filter for deciding between a product that's merely OK, and another that becomes a classic or industry standard. In this "book of the month" slot we recommend classic books which cover a particular subject so well that you will want to return to them again and again. We welcome suggestions for books that you have found useful - which we will consider for inclusion at a later date.

This review is based on the 1992 edition. Reviewed by ZK.

YES! If you're involved in designing advertising or mailshots, then you'll find this book will help you get a better understanding of what you can do, and it can help you get better results. When I first read this book, almost every chapter made me look at what I was doing in a new light. After each night's reading, I rushed to try out the new ideas in my work the next day.

In the past, we have recommended this book to some of ACSL's list rental customers (who were marketing managers in various SPARC organizations) and they all reported satisfaction with the results.

Some of the 16 chapters in this book include:-

- Logical Media
- How to Find the Right Mailing List
- How to Write Copy That Sells
- What to Enclose
- How to Make Your Envelope Work for You
- Mail Order Catalogs
- How to use the Phone
- Timing

The book analyzes each subject, usually with real examples which show good (or bad) applications of the idea being discussed. It's also full of checklists and includes over 170 "impact ideas".

The pace of the book is fast, enthusiastic and very readable.

The only weakness of the book (in the 1992 edition that we have seen) is that due to the time it was written, it doesn't include detailed discussions of fax, email or web based marketing. However, the ideas in the book ARE transferable to the newer media. Everyone who uses direct marketing will gain something from this book, which encourages the reader to research their own market and learn from what they see in their own everyday experience.

ROOTS - SPARC International, Inc

Every month we'll take a look at some kind of institution within the SPARC market that we old-timers take for granted. If you're new to the Sun/SPARC market it may help you find a new source of information. If you're an old-timer yourself you may be surprised to see how some of these roots have changed since the last time you looked.

This month we're taking a look at SPARC International, Inc.

There are 3 reasons why, as a marketer, you should take another look at SPARC International, Inc (also known as SI).

1 BRANDING your product or company

2 PROMOTING your product or company

3 MARKET RESEARCH - discovering more about your market

BRANDING your product or company

As the computer market grows larger and more complex, the end-users who could buy your product, most of whom are non technical, will increasingly rely on brand recognition as a shortcut to filtering the marketing communications from the large number of potential suppliers most of whom are unknown or discontinuous in their awareness.

The SPARC® brand is a significant marketing asset, which in brand awareness surveys conducted by ACSL in the UK was recognized by significantly more people in the Sun market than most individual vendor identities with the exception of Sun Microsystems and Tadpole Technology. (Tadpole makes the SPARCbook portable workstations so in that case the link is reinforced in the product name and may have increased their awareness rating in our survey.)

SPARC International, Inc is the owner and licensee of ALL trademarks which include the word "SPARC". This includes well known examples such as SPARCstation, SuperSPARC, HyperSPARC, and UltraSPARC, and variations such as the SPARC Product Directory.

The SPARC brands can be assigned to products, services, and even to an organization. Therefore a company who is a member of SPARC International, Inc can in certain circumstances leverage the SPARC trademarks and gain recognition, credibility and a certain degree of market acceptance.

The most powerful examples of the use of brands within the computer market today are the use of the "Intel Inside" logo and the "Pentium" brand, both of which are trademarks of Intel Corporation. Within the segment of the computer market which is commonly recognized as the Sun, SPARC or Solaris computer systems market, the SPARC brands are significant marketing assets which can be licensed, even by companies which compete directly with Sun Microsystems, the company which originally developed these standards.

SPARC International, Inc is the company which licenses, protects and administers these brands on behalf of its members. If your company has developed products for use in this market, then the use of related trademarks for your product or company are potential benefits which you should consider.

PROMOTING your product or company.

If your company is a member of SPARC International, Inc then you currently get two free opportunities to promote your company when you become a SPARC International member. These are:-

1 A free web page on the SI directory of member companies. You can link from this to your own web site.

2 The recent practise of SI in the first half of 1996 has been: that when a company becomes a new member, then information about their new membership is promoted via the monthly electronic newsletter called SPARC-Flash. SPARC-Flash is distributed to thousands of people worldwide, so there is an immediate publicity benefit.

MARKET RESEARCH - discovering more about your market

The SPARC International web site includes market and product information about the companies which are SI members. Although there are many hardware vendors in the SPARC systems market who are not members of SI, the web site is a useful free reference to anyone taking their first look at this market. SI's SPARCshop, also on this web site, includes reference documents which provide more information about technical standards and product availability.

The following summary of SPARC International, Inc's activities is extracted from their (longer) article in the marketing pages of the SPARC Product Directory.

SPARC International, headquartered in California, is a member-funded organization with a four-part mission:

1. Evolve and maintain SPARC as an open architecture available to all parties.
2. Ensure interoperability of certified SPARC-based products.
3. Establish and maintain a source for distribution of SPARC information.
4. Publish important documents for buyers of SPARC-based products.

Our World Wide Web site at <http://www.sparc.org> is intended as an information resource for anyone in the SPARC community -- from developers, manufacturers and vendors to resellers, integrators and end users.

SI pursues these goals in cooperation with leading international corporations that have based their long-term strategies on a highly leveraged open systems industry infrastructure.

The primary characteristics of that infrastructure are open, cooperatively defined technology interfaces, multiple suppliers of core technologies based on those interfaces, and multiple component, platform and software vendors delivering products based on those technologies.

These objectives are pursued both by a dedicated staff and a strategic and operational structure involving many SI members. To give association access to all members, SPARC International provides various levels of policy, strategy and execution involvement depending on membership category.

Member Services and the Benefits of Membership

SPARC International offers programs that support its mission to test, brand and promote SPARC products. Programs are created in response to member demand, and are entirely funded by the members they serve.

Member Services fall into three categories:

• Basic Services

• Marketing Services

• Certification and Verification Services

for more information and contact details, refer to the SPARC International article in the SPARC Product Directory

SPARC International, Inc.
3333 Bowers Ave., Suite 280
Santa Clara, CA 95054-2913
USA
tel:- +1 408-748-9111
fax:- +1 408-748-9777
email:- info@sparc.com
url:- http://www.sparc.org

REFLECTIONS. The dangers of being "invisible". Reviewing your media.

The dangers of being "invisible".

Most of your efforts as a direct marketer will be aimed at the people who can influence the sales of your products. Sometimes, however, it's a good idea to market sideways to other organizations who also sell into your market, even if they may never buy your products. If you can identify the characteristics of future business partners, and market awareness about your company, so much the better. But if you ignore this activity, or leave it to chance, you may lose business opportunities in the medium term.

ACSL has identified many cases in which significant vendors in a segment of the SPARC systems market were "invisible" to other marketing people in organizations which had synergy in terms of the markets and customers being targeted. If you are "invisible" and approach another company to become your business partner, the outcome could be seriously at risk, and your credibility may suffer.

This danger is particularly acute if a large proportion of your direct marketing is channelled via direct mail. In that case, the selections you mail will generally exclude segments which aren't in your ideal market. However, public advertising is no guarantee of avoiding this problem, because many marketers do not actually read or get the magazines which relate to their market, even when they buy advertising space in those magazines.

The simplest example of marketing awareness sideways for most of you is when you consciously choose to market to groups of marketing people within Sun Microsystems. Sun has various levels of interest in around 10,000+ vendor organizations which sell Solaris software, SPARC compatible hardware or related services. Making yourself "visible" to the marketing people in Sun can often lead to significant partnering opportunities, particularly as Sun itself is the most successful company at leveraging its business by the principle of "1 plus 1 = 3".

Other opportunities include marketing awareness to Sun Resellers, or other vendors who supply complementary products or services.

For example a manufacturer of embedded SPARC CPU cards benefits from working with suppliers of the real-time systems software which is often installed on those cards. Similarly an independent training organization can work with a product supplier to forward product information to course delegates in return for getting leads for training.

Reviewing your media.

When was the last time you reviewed the list of magazines and other media you use for your advertising? We know many cases where vendors have advertised in the same magazines for several years without asking themselves the fundamental questions about how well these media track their market. Even if you are getting a good stream of leads (which is rarely measured) there could be good reasons to think about the gap between the people you market to, and the potential size of your reachable market. When ACSL measured this gap for SPARC vendors in the UK about three years ago, we surprised many people by pointing out that the circulation of the top 4 Sun specific magazines in the UK had declined or remained static, during which time the size of the installed base had more or less doubled.

This gap is even wider today and electronic media have effectively replaced printed magazines for most of the UK Sun market.

Some vendors have responded to this problem by advertising in a much wider range of computer and other magazines. Although this looks good in theory, one of the problems with using non-specialist media is that your message can be completely wasted unless your customers become conditioned to looking for your messages in those spaces. The cost of achieving this is outside the budget of most vendors in this market.

1 Ask your customers what they read. You may be surprised to learn that a significant proportion don't read what you think they do. But there is no better source of this market information than your own customer base. Such surveys are hard to conduct, because most people don't like to admit that they don't read the magazines which you offer in your tick-list. Selecting the target group also needs care. Beware the inbuilt bias of mailing the survey to a magazine's mailing list. We're serious. We recognize the address labels, and we have seen such surveys.

2 Consider the investment cost-benefits of defragmenting your market by means of an in-house journal or newsletter. Many of you already do this. In a future issue of MarketingViews, and with the help of an expert panel of those who are responsible for vendor newsletters we're going to ask how they can be made more relevant to the needs of your customers, and your own business goals.

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Legal Notes and trademarks.

MarketingViews - is an electronic newsletter published by ACSL which is the trading name of Applied Computer Science Ltd, in England.

Copyright 1996, 1997 ACSL.

Liabilities. ACSL will not be liable for any use or misuse of the information or data contained in this document. The data and views expressed herein are supplied in good faith and represent the views of the authors or editors, in the limited contexts supplied. They are provided to educate, inform and provoke discussion. Any business or career decisions taken on the basis of the enclosed information is at your own risk.