Whistling Past the Graveyard

M&A strategist Denzil Rankine told attendees of UFI's European Conference in April the compound annual growth rate of the "core product of exhibitions"—namely, floor space—is limping along at a mere 2%.

Inflation will eat that—and more—for breakfast.

When you consider how complacent most concrete-peddling association show organizers are, the best you can say is they're "whistling past the graveyard."

The idiom has two meanings, one positive, one negative.

"Whistling past the graveyard" can mean you're displaying nonchalance in the face of danger.

Or it can mean you're clueless.

Whichever's the case, associations need to find new revenue streams to shore up concrete sales.

They can't just hope shows will return to vitality by themselves, the economy will boom, or that "Millennials will attend when they get jobs."

Should You Love Direct Mail?

Direct mail response rates have reached a 14-year high, according to the Direct Marketing Association's latest Response Rate Report.

So if you've been looking for a competitive weapon, look no further.

If your foes have abandoned the mailstream, you have an opportunity to dominate the channel with the highest response rate of all.

The response of direct mail for house lists now stands at 5.3%; the response rate for rented lists, at 2.9%.

Dazzling, compared to other channels.

Web advertising garners a paltry .9% response; email, a .6% response for house lists, and a .3% response for rented lists; social a .6% response; and paid search a .5% response. None even cracks 1%

While email and social have a higher ROI (122% and 28% respectively), direct mail's ROI (27%) ain't too shabby.

What's not to love?

5 Keys to Content Marketing Success

Sadly, 6 in 10 content marketers can't measure success.

Measuring success requires that you establish goals and KPIs, says DMG's Gordon Plutsky:

Reach. How many people does our content touch? Measures include page views, social impressions, newsletter opens, etc.

Engagement. How many people read our content? Measures include clicks, PDF downloads, video views, etc.

Sharing. Do people share our content? Measures include shares on social networks, forwarding of links, forwarding of newsletters, etc.

Conversion. Do people raise a hand? Measures include list sign-ups, form completions, webinar sign-ups, sales inquiries, etc.

Revenue. Do people buy anything? To measure sales, you must code your inbound tactics and import the attributions to your CRM system—a process that defies even the most practiced marketers.

Feel daunted? View success as a "comprehensive strategic plan rather than a ream of numbers," Plutsky says.

B2B Print Advertising Lingers On

Print may be passé, but B2B marketers nonetheless spent $9.75 billion on print ads last year, according to MediaRadar. That's more than the GDP of many nations, including Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Oman and North Korea.

Ad dollars are no doubt shifting to digital, as B2B marketers devote more of their money each month to email, native ads, and video ads than print.

And 6 of 10 B2B marketers who spend money on digital advertising spend nothing on print.

The stalwarts who do are narrowing the list of magazines they place ads in, favoring industry-leading ones over niche ones.

B2B magazine publishers, of course, are scurrying to go digital and diversify their lead-gen offerings.

We Didn't Start the Fire

Since Friday can't be a national holiday, let's at least make it a one-day cease-fire. 

No Boomer-bashing on June 2, the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt, Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Boomers have been taking a lot of heat recently.

"Boomers weren’t genetically predestined to be dysfunctional; they were conditioned to be," says venture capitalist Bruce Cannon Gibney, author of A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. 

"They were the first generation to be raised permissively, the first reared on television and subject to its developmental harms, and the only living group raised in an era of seemingly effortless prosperity," Gibney says. 

"Can too much license, TV, and unearned wealth distort personalities? May I suggest looking south toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?"

While you're stagnating in a barista's job or your parents' basement, think about this, Ms. Millennial: Boomers didn't save the world; but they also didn't make it.

The album's cover proves that.

If you want to blame society's present ills on anyone, blame them any of the 66 people depicted, from Karl Marx to Carl Jung, Albert Einstein to Aldous Huxley, T.E. Lawrence to Stan Laurel, Mae West to Marlon Brando.

Give us a break.

We didn't start the fire.