Brilliant Client Service: It’s Not Just for Peaceful Revolutionaries Any More! I just read this quote, attributed to an unlikely source, Mahatma Gandhi, in an annual report from InfoUSA, one of the biggest public companies in our industry: A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so. This quote is widely believed to actually be from Gandhi,…
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InfoUSA
Silly, Silly Patent Nonsense
Silly, Silly Patent Nonsense Some news floated around the email marketing world yesterday that is potentially disturbing and destructive but highlights some lunacy at the same time. I hope I’m getting enough of the details right here (and quite frankly that isn’t a joke, which it feels like). Tom DiStefano of Boca-based PerfectWeb Technologies is suing direct marketing behemoth InfoUSA for patent infringement of a business process patent for bulk email distribution that he received in 2003. I will first issue my disclaimers that I’m not a patent lawyer (nor do I even play one on TV) and that I have only quickly read both the legal complaint and the patent. But my general take on this is that it’s…
Convergence Continues
Convergence Continues So according to this article and this one, Acxiom is going to acquire Digital Impact in a much more friendly way (e.g., with more money) than InfoUSA was trying to last month. This will probably be mixed news for DI employees, but it’s certainly good news for the email sector overall. It builds on and extends the trend that really got going in the last 12 months for the big offline direct marketing companies to more fully embrace email as an integrated part of the DM mix for their clients. InfoUSA has already gobbled up a few of the smaller players in the space, and Harte-Hanks bought PostFuture as well. Why is it good? Everyone wins. Clients win…