After reading a few weeks ago that venerable DM wordsmith Robert W. Bly could find no traditionally measured ROI from blogging, numerous members of the blogging community defended blogging from the bloggers' viewpoint. I asked DM News editor
Tad Clarke if he would be interested in their defense from the perspective of someone with a background in direct marketing who has also been a blogger for about a year and a half.
Bly,
in his counterpoint column, also appearing today in DM News, didn't attempt to counter the claim that positive ROI is possible from blogs. Instead, he noted that he knows of a DM campaign that produces upward of $40 million per year in annual sales from e-mail marketing, and asserted that if a blog can't produce 1% of that, or $400,000 annually, it is insignificant.
I beg to differ. First, if that were the case, wouldn't that mean that every other DM effort, including the classic control package tested direct mail format, would need to reach that sales mark to be considered effective? In the same column today, Bly chastised an observer, noting that "businesses large and small (make) healthy profits with traditional direct mail and e-mail marketing." Are we to assume that even the smallest business generates $400,000 per year in sales from these efforts?
Blogs, like direct mail, e-mail and telemarketing, can be used in a wide variety of ways by a wide variety of businesses to reach a wide range of goals. For many sites, like this one, blogs are a way to generate measurable and growing revenue and exposure.
As one who has also worked with e-mail efforts generating millions of dollars in sales annually, I would also ask what the cost differences might be in using each tool.
Like it or not, the
Cluetrain Bly speaks of with some disdain in today's column has left the station. He does, however, seem to have an open mind on the subject of blogging. He has recently started his own blog and is qouted endorsing this
Marketing Profs seminar.
My advocacy of the benefits of blogging as part of an integrated direct marketing plan is based not on some evangelical fervor over the medium, but rather on my experience and the vision I see evolving.
Customers are in control.
Blogging is a way for Direct Marketers to embrace that challenge.
