‘Making Money in an Age of Change’ is the theme of the Canadian Direct Marketing Association’s 1995 Convention and Trade Show, to be held May 16-19 at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre.

As publisher of the official showguide, Strategy asked a cross-section of this year’s conference speakers to respond to a three-part question illuminating the conference theme.

The question was:

‘While there is all this talk about the information highway, the reality is that marketers are still making money doing things the old way – through the mail.

– How soon do you expect the information highway – as a principal means of selling goods and services – will become a reality?

– How are you preparing yourself for that transition?

– And, finally, how far do you think marketing via the information highway will evolve – what will things look like 10 years from now?’

Speaker Response: Hirsch: infobahn will enhance, not kill, direct mail

Raquel K. Hirsch, Director, Database Marketing, Intrawest

In North America, the information highway is here, and a reality already, in the form of the Internet, as well as commercial online services, with its most user-friendly and widely accepted application, e-mail.

In the short term, I don’t see the information highway necessarily ‘as a principal means of selling goods and services.’

Just like the advent of direct marketing did not kill retailing, the widespread acceptance and use of the information highway will not supersede direct – but will enhance it.

Through the Internet, interested prospects and customers have access to better and more timely information on the company and can start marketing ‘access to its information’ as a value-added service.

The success of the information highway is blurring some to the existing distinctions in the many steps of the selling process.

As a result – and this is what we have always said about direct marketing – companies are able to allow customers to do business with them in any way customers choose: by phone, by mail, via the Internet. Choice is the issue.

Success (defined as acceptance) of the information highway is clear when you look at the widespread use of e-mail to transact ‘information’ among consumers.

But there is more.

If what the company sells can be transmitted via the Internet (like music normally sold through cds, or computer games normally sold through diskettes), I believe we will shortly start seeing a shift to transactions via the information highway (resolving first the issue of encrypting data is key.)

And then there is the issue of positioning.

Just like if a company does not have voice mail, it is sometimes perceived as not being ‘with it,’ a company not having a domain on the Internet to offer its customers (or at least a page), will be perceived as ‘backwards’ by many.

But the information highway becoming ‘a principal means of selling goods and services?’ Not in the near future – but, so what? It will still be wildly successful in its own right.

Personally, I am preparing for the transition by educating myself, and by consuming and transacting in the new reality.

I subscribe to commercial online services (eWorld and aol) as well as ‘surf the Net’ regularly.

I explore what other companies are doing. I use my e-mail. I read as much as I can on information highway (online, and in books and magazines. too.)

From a professional standpoint, we at Intrawest are working on our own home pages on the Internet (some are already online and we expect to publish the complete ‘set’ by the end of April.)

We’ll provide information on the company, as well as on what most people who look us up are interested in: skiing.

The objective of all this effort is to reach our prospects and customers in ‘one more way.’

Ten years from now, the majority of upper- and middle-class households in North America will have a home computer and will be plugged in to the Internet and/or to a commercial online service.

As a result, the dissemination of information via the information highway will be as commonplace as calling a 1-800 number is today (and think where that was 10 years ago.)

Also, 10 years from now, more and more of the millions of university students in North America today on the Internet will have become consumers.

Totally adept at the new method of communication, plus now with disposable income, these new consumers will develop an increasing reliance on the information highway to buy goods and services.

Also, and I know this by watching my own two young children interact with the information highway, I can rather safely predict an even greater fracturing of television viewing audiences: ‘surfing the Internet’ takes a lot of leisure time away from watching tv. And, apparently, is a whole lot more fun.

As a result, 10 years from now, we the marketers will have thought of interesting and exciting ways to attract our target markets to our Web pages.

And once they find us, we’ll make sure their time with us is valuable to them.

Note: My e-mail address is rkhirsch@intrawest.com, and I welcome readers’ comments to my answers.