Marketplace: According to a DMA report, 93.7% of respondents using non-catalog direct mail, receive responses online!

Industry: Only 39% of marketers customize the landing page - Many marketers think the outbound campaign is doing the heavy lifting and the landing page exists only as a passive collection cup for leads generated. - Marketing sherpa report

Marketplace: 54% of respondents in a consumer survey said they had a more favorable opinion of the companies that send them email. - Epsilon (Oct 2008)

Industry: Almost half of interactive marketers surveyed say their organization struggles to prove the ROI of its efforts, while 7 in 10 say there are understaffed to do so. - Forrester Research (2008)

Marketplace: Engaging your audiences in more relevant communications increases net profits by an average of 18 times more than broadcast mailing - Jupiter Research

Industry: 51.4% of printers do not offer variable data printing - Printing Industries of America, Digital Printing Council.

We do what we do, to help marketing service providers produce innovative campaigns that succeed in the marketplace.

Seth Godin recently published a blog post about sunk costs. Read the post here.

Yes, in business school, they teach you that making the right decisions often means ignoring sunk costs and measuring what the cost/benefits are in the future.

There is some truth to that, but boy is it hard to ignore sunk costs! I would even say it is against human behavior to do so! Too often we dwell on decisions we make in the past and its inertia affects our decisions in the future.

For some professions, like venture capitalists, you never ignore sunk costs, for others, like printers, it is hard to do so. Using Seth Godin’s Analogy, the $10,000 property (Digital Press) could bring in more business for you than the $1,000,000 (offset press) one. Which should you invest in?