Farewell to InMarketing

We suppose we should be doing victory laps. The Direct Marketing Association is pulling the plug on InMarketing, its excuse for a monthly magazine.

Here's two theories as to why.

The first is that John Greco took to heart the beating he took in the trade press last fall. The DMA chief was pilloried by Denny Hatch, Tad Clarke and yours truly.

Under this scenario, Greco waited a decent interval either to save face or to fulfill a contract with Pohly & Partners, the custom publisher that produced the tepid periodical, then got out.

Part of us hopes that's true because it's much more fun skewering John than being nice to him.

But there's a larger point: The DMA shouldn't be competing with its own members, and we're sure that Greco heard that from people other than the outraged editors and publishers.

The other scenario is that Greco took a hard look at the publishing market and decided the DMA didn't belong there.

If so, he's right. The advertising base has been consolidating in the DM trade field, and there's barely enough to go around for three titles, let alone four.

But it's also consistent with some of Greco's other actions — like pulling back from costly regional affiliations and conferences (see Ken Magill's story in the March 29 Direct Newsline). He seems to realize that the DMA shouldn't be wasting member resources on marginal or unproductive activities (many of them holdovers from the previous regime).

That's also a good reason for dumping InMarketing. And if it's so, John Greco is showing true leadership.

And now for some shameless self-promotion.

Marketers have spoken. Recent surveys show their top priority is improving measurement and analytic skills.

For example, almost half of the large firms surveyed by the CMO Council said their most important future investment is to create a performance dashboard. Even more said they need better analytics. And we've seen similar results in other polls.

That's the motivation behind MarketingROI, the newsletter of performance measurement and analytics. The biweekly e-zine is written for chief marketing officers who are accountable for their investments. We started it a few months ago under our Chief Marketer brand's banner.

Want to subscribe? Visit Chief Marketer's Web site (www.chiefmarketer.com). While there, you also can opt in for Chief Marketer Report, the weekly newsletter edited by Sherry Chiger, and for E-Centric, our biweekly on the development and delivery of electronic content.