“There’s a lot more to value than you would ever see in a single focus on price. It has to be very holistic. When you’re talking about direct marketing, same thing holds true.”

– Michael Lowenstein, chief research officer at The Relational Capital Group and principal at Beyond Philosophy in this video.

Marketers are always eager to ride the wave of the next best thing and these days digital is making some big waves. Yet something marketers may not be considering is whether their target audience even likes the beach.

If your customer can’t stand sand in their shoes, it might be time to put the board aside and start delivering a more relevant message.

Earlier this year Direct Marketing News published, “Don’t Forget, Marketing is About the Customer” an article that revealed statistics showing marketers are increasingly poised for digital development, despite the impressive ROI of direct mail.

According to MarketingSherpa’s “2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report,” (cited in the DMA article) 58 percent of marketers believe the growing presence of mobile and tablets is a prime development that will impact email marketing programs in the next 12 months. Also, 57 percent feel that social should be taken more seriously.

Yes, marketing is a mixed bag.

“I think sometimes in marketing we get caught up in terminology, technology, and specific channels, but our customers don’t think this way,” Daniel Burstein, director of editorial content of MECLABS, states in the article. “What they care about is communicating with each other. And finding the information they need.”

Target Marketing reported direct mail as the top deliverer of new customers (31.3 percent) and customer retention (37.5 percent) in its annual survey of media usage, earlier this year.