Sponsored Content WEBINAR: ELECTION 2008: E-mail Tips from a Political Insider   WEBINAR: Becoming the Illusionist: The Magic of Using "Brand" to Drive Response without Results Disappearing in the Process   WEBINAR: Score and Win Through Cooperation   TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Holiday's are prime-time for email marketing - maximize your ROI by getting to the inbox   ON DEMAND WEBINAR--MASTER CLASS: High Performance Online and Off-line Strategies for Large Scale Customer Acquisition   FREE WHITE PAPER - Direct Mail and the Internet Find any supplier you need - agencies, CRM, fulfillment, lists, e-commerce, paper, printers, telemarketing, and more. Featured Categories Lists and Data Telemarketing Database Marketing E-commerce Web Marketing Agency & Creative Services Print, Production & Paper Lists and Data Processing :: view all categories Get free access to more than 50,000 list data cards - one of the most comprehensive databases in the industry. >> Search Now DIRECT Buzz Blog Webinars Buyer's Guide Calculators JobZone ListFinder Promo Calendar Research Store E-Newsletters Print Magazine This Month in Direct Magazine Deal With It Direct had a full house for this year's list roundtable. Considering all the additional responsibilities on brokers' plates, that's impressive... See Full July Issue

In the business of direct marketing, we are always in a hurry. We hustle our mailers out the door to be the first to arrive. We perk up our offers with incentives to prompt speedy response and we promise immediate delivery. We maintain 800 numbers and online ordering as a convenience and to accelerate sales. The clock is running on everything we do.

Our need for speed is most noticeable during the holiday season, a time of inflexible deadlines and less-forgiving customers. We drop our catalogs in October to get a jump on the season. We step up our telemarketing to get the ear of consumers before our competitors. We push orders out the door to make sure our customers have everything they need well before they need it.

It is said that good things come to those who wait, but in direct marketing we see no virtue in patience. We believe the early bird gets the worm. So we try to make early purchasing worth it with cheaper prices and superior offers to consumers who are willing to “buy now.” We tell ourselves that this is in consumers' best interests anyway because it saves them the hassles and headaches of last-minute shopping, especially around holiday time.

Honestly, though, the real benefits of shortcutting the purchase cycle accrue to us, not to consumers. If we can get consumers to respond a bit earlier, we can get a head start on building a relationship. Plus, getting some cash in the coffers a little faster makes a big difference in the time-value of our money, not to mention in paying our bills more easily — perhaps even on time!

Indeed, in focusing on our own interests more than on our customers', we run right by an opportunity. Because there is a trade-off to our uncompromising focus on moving at such great speed. As one major retailer commented to us recently, “We spend millions of dollars trying to get consumers to shop when we want them to shop rather than being available when consumers actually want to buy.” This is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with alacrity — only to remind us that unless we are careful and attentive, haste makes waste.

A recent study conducted by DIRECT and Yankelovich Inc. (“Consumer Outlook,” DIRECT, August) found that consumers who have purchased through a direct marketing channel in the past six months have a distinctive attitudinal profile. Compared with those who didn't respond to direct marketing in the past six months, DM purchasers are more likely to describe themselves as competent, creative, intelligent, self-confident, talented and optimistic.

They are also more likely to describe themselves as being procrastinators. Almost a third of DM buyers characterize themselves that way, 50 percent higher than non-responders. Even though these customers regard themselves as bargain hunters and smart shoppers, a sizable number put off buying until the 11th hour.

Direct marketing programs that are completely front-loaded or that offer the best service and value only to consumers who respond quickly will fail to make an impression on the one-third who tend to procrastinate. This risks creating a feeling among many consumers that their preferences are being ignored, which in turn throws up an additional barrier to response.

By designing our direct marketing as if all consumers share our interests in timeliness and speed, we fail to take into account the contrary attitudes and values of a substantial portion of our customer base. Certainly, procrastinators buy through DM channels, but we should ask ourselves how much money we have left on the table by not offering a third of our customers the right product with the right offer at the right time!

Of course, it's only logical that procrastinators would use direct marketing. As much as we may wish otherwise, DM channels do enable procrastinators to buy things conveniently at the last minute. This has particular appeal during the holiday season when parking, accessibility, availability and ease are hard to find at the mall. But we don't design direct marketing to accommodate procrastinators, regardless of their value to our businesses. Rather, we capture some sales from them on the side as a serendipitous, unintended consequence of the inherent nature of direct marketing. The important question to consider is whether we're missing a much bigger opportunity because we are simply in too much of a hurry.

We can't keep die-hard procrastinators from putting things off. So it's better and smarter to take procrastination for what it is and to adjust our marketing accordingly. Messages encouraging people to shop early or offers enticing people to buy now simply won't work for many consumers. Even more importantly, last-minute incentives to get the last few consumers over the hump may not be needed since many of these consumers are going to buy at the last-minute anyway, discount or not.

We should know which messages and which offers should go to which customers. This means we have to know as much about attitudes as about behavior and demographics.

Behavior like last-minute shopping requires a deeper understanding of the attitudes behind it. Our marketing will be misdirected until our databases incorporate attitudes. It's time for a change before — as we might worry — it's too late.

J. WALKER SMITH is president of Yankelovich Inc., Atlanta.

CRAIG WOOD is president of Yankelovich's Monitor MindBase division in Chapel Hill, NC.