2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success

Lead author Denny Hatch, founded Who's Mailing What newsletter and is consulting editor for Target Marketing magazine.

NTC Business Books. 368pp. Paperback. Cost: $16.47

<i>Capitalizing on Voice of Customer</i>: The only metric that impacts other metrics…

“Why is customer loyalty and engagement important? The biggest reason is that customer engagement is the only metric that impacts other metrics typically measured by a company. As one industry expert noted, When customer engagement slides, so do a great many other outcomes, including future sales, growth and profit. Obviously, engaged customers are the best customers for a company to have. Eight of ten executives believe their company loses sales each year because of failure to create engaged customers, and 80% say that engaged customers are critical because they recommend products or services.”

Excerpted from ‘Capitalizing on Voice of Customer,’ Published by Allegiance

Allegiance . 185 pp.

<i>Engagement: Winning the Battle for Customer and Employee Hearts and Minds</i>: The Spillover Effect

Measuring the success of a business is not as simple as saying: ‘happy employees equal happy customers.’ Happy employees can also be lazy employees. A person taking tickets at a movie theater may be happy, but it may be because he or she gets to sit around on a comfortable chair while drinking free soft drinks and eating free popcorn. Many people might be happy if their employers paid them for what is merely time spent drinking soda, eating popcorn and collecting ticket stubs.

For the above saying to be true, companies should be looking at levels of engagement as the measuring stick. We know that emotionally engaged employees feel like they are doing something valuable for their organizations and that their efforts will make a difference. Customers know when they are talking to emotionally engaged employees. The positive feelings that the employees have about their jobs and employers influence the level of service they give to customers. When these positive experiences continue to happen, then customers become engaged, and they become advocates for the company’s products and services.

While movie theaters may be an easy target when it comes to pointing out the signs of disengaged employees, it’s certainly not exclusive to this business. Employees across all industries have a major impact on customer loyalty and engagement. The mantra of ‘happy employees equal happy customers’ is real, and companies should seek emotionally engaged employees because it will be these employees who help create emotionally engaged customers.

This is the spillover effect.

Allegiance .

Advanced Methods of Marketing Research

Contains summaries of advanced research techniques. Also included in this volume are 10 papers contributed by marketing/social psychology professor Richard P Bagozzi.

Blackwell Business. 428pp. Paperback. Cost: $50.95

Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective

Explores how marketers must look beyond traditional media to communicate with consumers in the changing field of advertising and promotion. Describes the shift from conventional methods to implementation of an integrated marketing communications strategy and reviews the promotional tools available to help make the transition.

McGraw-Hill Companies. 67pp. Hardcover. Cost: Varies with seller

Advertising and Sales Promotion Strategy

A comprehensive handbook on advertising and sales promotion, covering strategic and tactical issues. Includes examples of creative advertising campaigns. The four parts of this textbook cover: Introduction to advertising and sales promotion, Communication strategy, Sales promotion strategy and Planning advertising and sales promotion.

Prentice Hall. 475pp. Hardcover. Cost: $138.40

Advertising, Communications & Promotion Management

The definitive advertising and promotion management text for students at the MBA level. Emphasizes corporate communications and business products/services in addition to the traditional focus on consumer packaged goods.

McGraw-Hill Companies. 672pp. Hardcover. Cost: Varies with seller

Aftermarketing: How to Keep Customers for Life Through Relationship Marketing

Describes all of the processes necessary for customer retention at both large and small businesses. This book comes closer than any other to addressing all the elements of the New Marketing spelled out in this article.A relevant guide for managers, retailers, educators and students, Aftermarketing is applicable to product and services, consumer and industrial markets, and both the profit and non-profit sectors.

Irwin Professional Pub. 300pp. Hardcover. Cost: Varies with seller

Ageless Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the Hearts and Minds of the New Customer Majority

Ageless Marketing discusses a research project on the aging boomer generation, detailing the core values, buying behaviors, and emotional factors that are unique to the New Customer Majority. With its new research approach in profiling this lucrative market, this book is good for anyone in the marketing industry.

Kaplan Business. 384pp. Hardcover. Cost: $16.50

Analyzing Sales Promotion: Text & Cases : How to Profit from the New Power of Promotion Marketing

Uses sales data generated by in-store electronic scanners to explain sales promotion strategy and its place in an integrated marketing program.

Dartnell Corp.; 2nd edition. 226 pages. Paperback.

Best Face Forward: Why Companies Must Improve Their Service Interfaces With Customers

Best Face Forward talks about obtaining success through employee motivation. This book reveals how to determine the optimal division of labor between people and machines, discover innovative ways to combine people and machines to mediate critical customer interactions, and more.

Harvard Business School Press. 262pp. Hardcover. Cost: $24.05

Best Practices : Building Your Business with Customer-Focused Solutions

Best Practices shares how more than forty best-practices companies focus on their customers, create growth, reduce cost, and increase profts. It focuses on customers and how to involve them in everything from the design of products and services to marketing, selling, and product delivery. This book is good for managers in any business, in any industry.

Touchstone. 240pp. Paperback. Cost: Varies with seller

Best Sales Promotions

Reviews 126 of the best recent sales promotion campaigns. Readers will develop a better understanding of what constitutes a successful promotion and of what a good promotion can—and can't—do. A straightforward book that is useful for readers with all levels of experience.

McGraw-Hill Companies. 240pp. Paperback.

Beyond 2000--The Future of Direct Marketing

Here are the forward-looking views of 28 leading experts. Especially interesting are the many takes on where technology will take marketers.

NTC Books. 268 pp. Paperback.

Beyond the Brand: Why Engaging the Right Customers is Essential to Winning in Business

Beyond the Brand provides an in depth look at the importance of certain customers in the marketplace. With case studies and practical step-by-step methods, readers learn how to engage customers in a dialog that can fuel real product and marketing innovation. Readers will learn how to develop a bottom-up strategy, hone intuition and find inspiration to drive innovation, find your company's center of gravity, and identify and find new ways to listen to the key voices in your marketplace.

Kaplan Business. 304pp. Hardcover. Cost: $25.00

Brand Leadership: Building Assets in the Information Society

Guides managers in the implementation of strategic brand leadership. Citing such brand-focused companies as Virgin, L.L. Bean, and Nike, the authors provide hundreds of case studies to support theories on building brand equity.

Free Press. Cost: currently unavaible through amazon

Brand Leadership: The Next Level of the Brand Revolution

Guides managers in the implementation of strategic brand leadership. Citing such brand-focused companies as Virgin, L.L. Bean, and Nike, the authors provide hundreds of case studies to support theories on building brand equity.

Free Press. 368pp. Hardcover. Cost: $19.80

Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand

D'Alessandro, CEO of the John Hancock insurance group, offers principles for improving a company's understanding of brand usage. He succeeds at reminding everyone from the CEO to the people on the assembly line that their company's brand is its most crucial asset.

McGraw-Hill. 240pp. Paperback. Cost: $11.53

Brands: The New Wealth Creators

The authors of 20 essays look at branding from a wide range of perspectives, from the creation of a new brand and development of brand names through packaging design and advertising. For executive-level managers who are either directly or indirectly involved with marketing and branding, this is a must read.

New York University Press. 544pp. Hardcover. Cost: $50.00

Brandscendence: Three Essential Elements of Enduring Brands

Brandscendence explores what makes certain brands prevail over others. According to author, Clark, there are three elements that are essential for brand endurence: revelence, context, and mutual benefit.Clark also outlines his formula for branding success and illustrates how it's applied by the world's most prominent brands.

Kaplan Business. 272pp. Hardcover. Cost: Varies with seller

Commonsense Direct Marketing

This is for anyone whose business depends on direct marketing. Particularly useful are the chapters concerning the agency/client relationship.

Kogan Page; 4th Edition. 352 pp. Paperback.

Consumer Behavior

Consumer Behavior is a textbook that contains 32 short cases that will discues the many aspects of consumer behavior. This book is good for any business professional looking to learn more about consumers.

Prentice Hall. 688pp. Hardcover. Cost: $149.35

Creating Demand

An analysis of what it takes to exploit the market potential of a product. The original hardcover edition was declared one of the top 30 business books of 1992 by Executive Book Summaries. Now, it's been updated for the 21st century and available in paperback.

Symmetric Systems Inc. 258pp. Paperback. Cost: $22.00

Creating Special Events: The Ultimate Guide to Producing Special Events

A complete guide to planning and implementing promotional events. Includes a section on fund-raisers. A very good book for beginners and intermediate people who plan or want to plan large events.

Master of Ceremonies. 271pp. Hardcover.

Creative Strategy In Direct Marketing

Written for creative marketing professionals, this book covers the basics of turning copy and graphics into sales. Also contains useful production information.

McGraw-Hill/Contemporary; 2nd edition. 502 pp. Hardcover.