During his victory speech on Nov. 4, President-elect Barack Obama told supporters that “change has come to America.” He was, of course, referring to the obvious political and historical implications of his win.

Direct mail doesn't have to be a shot in the dark. There are number of steps that direct mailers can take to make their marketing efforts easier and more effective. Here are four:

Direct marketers must work together to head off regulatory restrictions, developing cohesive solutions to advertising ethics and direct mail-delivery issues.

Question: How do you establish a marketing dialogue with a smallish, specialized market largely influenced by thought-leaders and solutions?

For companies that maintain inbound call centers, tasks such as measuring response quality and call resolution, or triaging calls to the right place, can do a lot for customer satisfaction and retention.

Contact centers serve many functions, from the mundane (change of address) to the profane (irate complaints) and the arcane (technical service).

Keith Dawson is principal analyst-contact center practice at Frost and Sullivan. BtoB recently asked him about trends in contact center metrics.

What if you could access a large pool of potential customers that were already aware of your company and its products, open to being educated and agreeable to receiving e-mails and other communications straight from your marketing team?

As a commercial lighting and electrical components company, Hager Electro, Obernai, France has a typically complicated b-to-b sales model, encompassing electricians, distributors and builders themselves.

In little more than a week, the first phones running Googleand#39;s Android mobile operating software will hit the streets, courtesy of carrier partner T-Mobile.

As the economy reels from the crisis on Wall Street, a newly released study from the Chief Marketing Officer Council suggests companies must engage with their customers better.

A slew of marketers is producing original online video for use on their Web sites or for placement on such video aggregation sites as YouTube.com.

Jim Bruton is associate director and Webcast portfolio manager at Ernst and Young, in Secaucus, N.J. BtoB recently asked him about his company's use of online video analytics.

For a company whose products are numerous—from the ubiquitous (electricity) to the imposing (jet engines and railroad locomotives)—there are plenty of opportunities to tell good stories and, in the process, enhance customer awareness and engagement.

Red Roof Inn goes a little bit country; DRTV spot builds results for Kreg Tool; and American Airlines Credit Union reaches out to far away members.

Recent results posted by Whole Foods Market have stirred some doubts about the health of the organic food mar­ket in today's economy.

Products and services geared towards health and wellness are often viewed as a luxury expense. Lauren Bell discovers how marketers promote their value and justify the cost.

Hasler Inc., a provider of postage and handling products, has deployed two custom CRM applications from Salesforce.com with the help of software-as-a-service (SaaS) consulting firm Bluewolf. The Salesforce offerings are being used by Hasler dealers nationwide, replacing a variety of other systems and creating a standardized database throughout the company.

Google and Procter & Gamble (P&G) have been swapping employees since earlier this year in an effort to foster creativity and establish a mutual relationship. Since January, about 24 employees from Google and P&G have been sitting in on each other's business meetings while brainstorming and offering outsider opinions and ideas.

Media and marketing services company Valassis communications announced that it would sell its French subsidiaries to HighCo, a French marketing services company, for an undisclosed cash amount.

Worldata has introduced the CiTDB ? International Masterfile from Harte-Hanks list to the market. This list contains contacts who are technology professionals in the list rental marketplace.

Global audience and content network Adconian Media Group has acquired KTV Digital Media, a production studio and operator of video destination sites. Together the companies will form their own content development and syndication arm to be called RedLever.

Proclivity's Sheldon Gilbert discusses the nuances of behavioral targeting.

Traditional media such as inserts can offer steady success in the coming year for marketers ? especially in an era of postage and paper cost increases, say four insert media experts.

Cutting mail delivery is often cited as a way to cut costs, but the postal industry counters that it would adversely affect consumers. Our experts assess the potential impact of a five-day postal week

As the Web plays an increasingly strategic role in customer engagement, marketers are scrambling to better understand, measure and act upon information gleaned from this medium. It has been well-documented that we are in the midst of an information explosion, and the Internet has served as its fuse. Amidst the bits of data that companies try to reassemble on an ongoing basis, perhaps no area has proved as vexing as that of the data generated from the Web.

Are you getting the most from your e-mail marketing campaigns? The following questions will help you out. How do you welcome new subscribers to your program? Keep new subscribers out of your regular communication stream.

Kaizen has been a buzzword in the corporate world for decades. It's a Japanese philosophy of continuous, incremental improvement and is engrained in the cultures of top companies like Toyota. Volumes have been written on this subject, but simply taken on its surface it's very powerful and inspiring.