Direct Marketing

Valpak Direct Marketing Systems, Inc. announced that it will partner with YaSabe.com to enter the expanding US Hispanic market.

The Cisneros Group of Companies teamed up with Cuponidad to launch its online couponing company in Venezuela, tapping into one of the fastest growing territories in Latin America‚s $70 billion e-commerce market.

The U.S. Postal Service recently hosted the 2012 USPS Sampling Innovation Symposium, an information forum featuring consumer packaged goods (CPGs) and advertising agency leaders from across the nation to develop creative strategies on growing a home-delivery product sampling program.

The battered US economy has driven price-conscious consumers online to do research before making a purchase, and eMarketer estimates that there will be 92.5 million online coupon users by the end of 2012. Those savings-savvy consumers will no doubt be helped by electronic circulars, which now rival their print counterparts in penetration, according to a November 2011 study of US internet users by Yahoo! and Ipsos.

Once just a sliver of all online dollars, US online ad spending on branding-based objectives now accounts for a significant—and growing—percentage of total online ad spending.

Direct-response marketing may soon be taking a backseat to online brand advertising initiatives. According to a DIGIDAY and Vizu “State of the Industry Survey,” more marketers plan to increase their online branding initiatives in 2012 than they do their direct response tactics.

It happens thousands of times per day in America: a shopper walks into the supermarket, leafs through the store circular to find discounts on products, and, fingers smudged by newsprint, sets off to shop, often with the circular in hand. But while the paper circular – whether delivered by mail, as a newspaper insert or viewed in the store – still reigns as the most popular way for shoppers to find sale items and product information, it is evolving in kind with consumers’ desire to seek deals across media.