±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Now in its 27th year, the IDMF (International Direct Marketing Fair) has withstood the challenge of several new DM shows launched in recent years, to establish itself as one of the world's leading DM events.

This year the IDMF is billing itself as a truly global show, with exhibitors from Europe as well as Hong Kong, the Philippines, Canada and the US.

There's a global feel to some of the product launches too, with international database, fulfilment and address capture services making their debut at the show.

There are a couple of significant innovations for the 2005 event. Running alongside the exhibition - which has its own free seminar programme - is a paid-for conference being staged in conjunction with CIMTech, the technology arm of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

The 'Managing Total Marketing' conference, says IDMF exhibition director Darren Whitehead, is designed to show marketers what technology can do for their business.

"It's all about trying to unite marketing skills with technology to make a profit," he says.

Day one of the conference looks at managing total marketing. Day two concentrates on the theme of customer centricity. And day three is about measuring marketing effectiveness.

Delegates to the show can book places at the conference via the IDMF website at: www.idmf.co.uk/CIMTechregistration11. Tickets for the conference cost £295 per delegate, per day.

Digital print explored

Another new innovation for 2005 is the Digital Print Pavilion, staged in conjunction with the British Printing Industries Federation. Here, visitors can take advantage of a free seminar programme each day, and learn about the opportunities that digital print is opening up for DM practitioners. Once again, says Whitehead, there's a clear emphasis on the business issues.

"We'll be focusing on real-life case studies," he adds, "where variable data digital printing is already helping direct marketers to hit a number of their DM objectives, such as increasing response, reducing waste and increasing ROI. It's not about the technology or the printing process. It's about what digital printing can do for your business."

Digital print is well represented in the exhibition itself. One of the companies aiming to convince visitors of its merits is Butler and Tanner, which is exhibiting at IDMF for the first time.

"We are primarily a book and annual report printer," says Butler and Tanner group marketing director Tim Taylor. "We came at digital printing from the book angle for short-run books, then we moved into personalised books (see www.dreambooks.net) Now, we're bringing it to the direct marketing industry."

Personalisation solutions

The company will be showcasing a project carried out for BMW which allows the car maker's distributors to order customised literature online.

"Until a year or so ago, personalisation in digital print was just black overprinting, but now the latest generation of digital presses and personalisation software can customise every element of a DM piece," he says.

Technology exhibits are also to the fore. Digital DM company IPT (Interactive Prospect Trading) is using the show to launch EmailTracker. The programme, built in-house by IPT, contains a database of more than 7,000 e-mails from 2,500 businesses. Users can choose to view e-mails distributed by clients from one of ten sectors, further broken down into more than 100 sub-categories. Advanced search functionality displays e-mails by content, and an alert system notifies clients of the distribution of competitor e-mails in real-time.

International exhibitors at the show include EuroContactPool (ECP), the online pan-European database operator, which is launching three new services, including ECP-cleaning, ECP-enhancement and ECP-profiling. These services will enable companies to match their existing customer information against ECP's B2B database, which covers almost 13 million named individuals in 15 million companies across 10 countries.

"A lot of international and pan-European marketers manage large in-house databases, where the quality of the data is inconsistent," says sales director Hakan Axelsson. "Often, they have no idea about how big the customer's business is and which customers are most likely to buy more products in the future. We provide B2B marketers with more knowledge of their existing customers and it's much more cost-effective than prospecting for new ones."

Another international exhibitor is CompuBase, which is attending IDMF for the third time. The company specialises in European IT-buyer databases, covering 17 European countries.

"This is the only marketing show we do outside our native France," says marketing director Emmanuel Armand. "We are seeing more pan-European DM campaigns and dealing with agencies more and more at an EMEA and European level, and this makes the UK, and IDMF, very important for us."

CompuBase will use this year's show to launch a new consulting suite, and an EMEA ICT Distributors Guide, covering 100,000 firms in 100 countries.

Looking further afield, US-based ACTON International will use the show to promote its Japan Superbase 21 database range. This includes the Japan Consumer list of 36 million names; Japan Superbase 21 Businesses, which has almost eight million Japanese businesses; the Japan Superbase 21 Responders list, with 80 million names; and the High School list of 11 million 16 to 20-year-olds in Japan.

"We've been running the Japan lists for 15 years now," says ACTON list promotions manager Carie Shallenberger. "Traditionally, the main users have been companies in the US and the Pacific Rim, but we hope to use IDMF to make European marketers aware there is Japanese data out there, and it's largely untapped. It has huge potential."

Something for everyone

Overall, there are few, if any, aspects of the DM business not represented at the show. Mainstream services, such as list management and broking, address capture, data cleansing, telemarketing, digital print, fulfilment, logistics management and e-mail broadcasting, stand in line alongside more esoteric offerings, such as the DM Fling, a "pop-up self-mailer" from Fling Promotions, and plastic card laser engraving from Intercard.

All this, and a free seminar programme, with more than 40 seminars over the three days, makes this an invaluable event for DM practitioners. And if it all gets too much, you can head for the Holistic stand, where the data specialist is serving refreshments and sushi on a revolving conveyer belt, in association with Japanese restaurant chain Yo! Sushi. For those who can see beyond the tempanyaki, Holistic will also be launching its enhanced News International list, with 100,000 new records and more than one million existing records appended with telephone numbers and private medical insurance data.

So for sushi, suppression and, no doubt, special offers, you know where to head.

IDMF FACT BOX

Venue: IDMF is held at Earls Court 2, London Date: 22-24 February 2005 Opening times: 9.30 - 17.00 each day.

Registration: Register online for fast-track entry at www.idmf.co.uk or call 0870 4294310 for a registration form. You can also register on the day of the show at the door.

ON SHOW AT THE IDMF

Pitney-Bowes will use the show to launch its new high-volume inserting platform, Comet. "We want to show marketing people that it's important to think about the technology that gets their campaigns out of the door, so that every time they send a statement or an invoice, they can use it as a marketing tool too," says Pitney-Bowes UK marketing manager David Jefferies.

Envelope maker and printer K&J Lockie will use the show to promote its Mailfast envelope range.

Unlike the traditional envelope, with trapezian, double-angled flaps, the Mailfast envelope has rounded flaps, curving round to the centre point which, says the company, makes for speedier enclosing in the mailroom.

Capscan, which specialises in international address management and address data-capture software, will show the latest version of its Matchcode product, Matchcode International. "The product itself is not new," says Capscan managing director Terry Hiles, "but we have done a lot of work in terms of extending the coverage and enhancing the quality of the addresses beyond that provided to the Universal Postal Union." List management and broking company EDM Media will launch a number of new lists, and promote the under-used concept of list swapping.

"We do a lot of swaps," says EDM Media manager Elizabeth Sayer. "If you're a mail order company, then another mail order company's database will work better than a bought-in list. We did four million swaps last year for charity, mail order and sweepstake clients."

DOWNTIME AT THE IDMF

Exhibitions, as anyone knows, can be hard work. All those suppliers to see and sales pitches to sit through. But at this year's IDMF, you can have a bit of fun too.

First, there's Meet at the Bar. After pre-registering for the show online, you can browse the visitor database on the IDMF website (www.idmf.co.uk).

Here you can send e-mails to contacts old and new to arrange to meet.

On the first night of the show (Tuesday), the DMA is holding its 'Bit of a Do' at the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum. This event will be attended by all the key movers and shakers in the DM industry. A highlight will be a performance by Emily's Cat, a band in which the drums are played by none other than IDMF exhibition director Darren Whitehead. Tickets from the DMA (tel: 020 7291 3300 or www.dma.org.uk).

Then on Wednesday, the DM industry's premier event - the Gala Dinner - will be held at the Park Lane Hilton, featuring good food, fine wine and an international cabaret.

For tickets call 020 8910 7834 or e-mail idmfteam@reedexpo.co.uk.