Direct mail is an essential marketing channel for all businesses seeking to build relationships with both existing and prospective customers.

During tough economic times, these relationships are even more crucial than normal, as getting out timely mailings with new destinations and offers is vital.

Email marketing delivered to smaller direct marketing lists can have a greater effect than those delivered on a more widespread scale.

This is according to new research that has analysed the open and click-through rates for direct marketing over the second half of 2008.

A number of growing businesses are maintaining their focus on acquiring new custom despite the current economic climate, according to new research.

The study revealed that around half of all companies still regard customer acquisition as their main direct marketing objective.

Are marketers wasting their time and money targeting their efforts on the youth market while ignoring the highest earners in the UK, the baby boomers? That’s the question posed by a new survey, out this week.

The study revealed that 45-65 year olds are given much less attention in marketing campaigns than the younger generation. This suggests an inbuilt prejudice towards the younger consumer. Perhaps the industry needs to take a harder look at its targeting.

This chimes with what we at Eclipse Marketing have been saying for some time. Click here for a related item on older audiences.

A rash of seemingly conflicting online marketing stories caught our eye. First came the news, as reported in Marketing Week and many others, that the European Parliament is considering restricting the use of online behavioural targeting (BT).

The tracking of the online behaviour of individuals and the selling of data to advertisers raises difficult privacy issues, according to the European Parliament, and the strengthening of existing EU legislation hasn’t been ruled out. Jack Jia included some interesting comments on privacy in his blog, as well as a rundown on the pitfalls of BT, particularly looking at how much Facebook really knows about its users’ intents. Meanwhile, Matthew Finch at e-consultancy tells us that use of behavioural information can boost your marketing success by up to 600%.

Then we heard that no less a brand than Vodafone is launching – you’ve guessed it – a new behavioural targeting campaign. So which way is the confused marketer to turn?