Is Your Marketing Data Telling You the Truth?

We love data. We use it to build models, plan campaigns, choose audiences and decide what to test next. But what if some of the things we think we’ve learned from our data are misleading us?

That’s the question at the heart of the October edition of Direct Mail Insiders Monthly Report.

John Miglautsch opens the issue with The Hidden Variable: Why Marketing Testing Fails and How Imagination Bridges the Gap — and some fascinating real-world examples of what can happen when marketers forget to account for time, context and human behavior.

And that’s just the beginning.

This month’s Mailing of the Month takes a close look at a BHG Financial campaign found in the Who’s Mailing What database. Same company. Same basic offer. Different formats. What changed — and why?

In Beyond The Mailbox, David Baer explores a new challenge for marketers: customers have more ways than ever to filter, compare and ignore what we put in front of them. He also asks a question worth applying to your next campaign: what makes something worth remembering?

Then there’s Call Notes, where a seemingly simple question about EDDM and gated communities leads to a practical discussion about when — and how — you might test unaddressed mail against an addressed campaign.

And we’ll wrap things up with a reminder that sometimes the smartest productivity hack is knowing when not to use one.

Download the October Direct Mail Insiders Monthly Report and see what’s worth a closer look.