List executives foresee aggessive post-war mailing, newsletter publishers holding steady.

"For the first time in a couple of years it really looks like things could turn the corner," said Richard Vergara, partner at the list brokerage group LDS Group Inc., New York. "I don't think we're out of the woods yet, but we're starting to see a glimmer of hope," Vergara told DM News.

The trade newspaper also reported that "business-to-business mailings and high-end consumer mailers were not really affected by the war"--especially when compared to catalog and mid- to lower-ticket consumer offers.

Dave Nelson, senior vice president on the brokerage side at Walter Karl Inc., a Donnelly Company in Pearl River, N.Y, reported, "I had a couple of mailers hold up March and April campaigns when the war was looming. As we won it they dropped their mail, and things seem to be doing fine."

Another list executive pointed out that "single biggest reason for optimism about the fall [mailing season] is the reprieve from another postal rate increase.

Vergara concluded, "Most of our mailers indicated that they would be mailing more aggessively this year than last. Mailers want to increase their testing for fall, and though it's hard to find new tests we will see mailers doing retests and maximizing selections."

Newsletter publishers' plans

The war in Iraq seems to have been little more than a blip on the radar screens of newsletter publishers. Most of them had already, in the past year and a half, instituted scaled-back promotion campaigns. Patti Wysocki, executive director of the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association, said that some members "are mostly using e-mail, so they aren't mailing much of anything these days."

Asked how the war has affected his promotion efforts, Harry Schuhmacher, editor-publisher of Beer Business Daily, in San Antonio, said, "We've pretty much continued our tried and true promotional efforts, which consist of a monthly mailing, speeches at beer industry events, and wordof-mouth, and our new subscriber rates have held true throughout the war.

"While I'm sure consumer response has suffered, I suspect business-to-business response is unaffected in many industries like ours as businesspeople still need information to do their jobs despite what is happening around the world."

Jim Sinkinson, president of Infocom Group, the Emeryville, Calif.-based publisher of six newsletters primarily for public relations practitioners, said, "Infocom Group's experience recently has been active and positive on both fronts lately. The war didn't seem to slow things down, which I had feared mightily (the last adventure in Iraq was devastating for us for a few weeks).

"We have found several direct mail control packages that are consistently delivering about $1 ROL to our regular lists, and we're also experiencing quite impressive results with telemarketing.

"As for e-mail marketing, we do quite a bit of it, and our results are still harmonious with an analysis I gave at last year's NEPA meeting: It works best for one-shots (ancillaries), and it doesn't seem to work at all for newsletter subscriptions. For example, we've had good action on conference tapes lately."

Independent DM copywriter Betsy Morris, of Tierra Verde, Florida, said, "My clients' marketing plans for the coming weeks are as varied as the companies and publications themselves. Several are now testing new direct mail packages, but that seems to be related more to internal issues rather than external factors such as the economy or the war.

"For the most part," she said, "my clients have continued to use DM, e-mail, telemarketing and fax promos as components of a multi-channel marketing mix, which I think is necessary in this day and age."