It’s more than a month away but if you’re in the area, please join me at the 4th annual Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Philippines Conference and Exhibition on September 20-21, 2007 at the Grand Ballroom, Hotel Intercontinental, Makati City, Philippines. I’ll be on the Search Engine Optimization and Analytics: How Best to Leverage Search Marketing and Web Analytics to Drive Leads panel and I’m really excited to present to the best one-to-one marketers in the Philippines.

Back in college, I took an elective in direct marketing and it was one of the most enjoyable and engaging subjects I had. I also manage an inhouse email marketing department and I’ve always looked to strategic database marketing as a guidebook, nay my bible, when running our Cheetahmail-powered email campaigns. In email for example, one should personalize campaigns with customer segmentation/personalization in mind. Direct marketing espouses that too, but with online you can do soooo much more. It would be an honor to present SEM to these marketers since I’ve learned so much from them. Going online is a natural progression for most marketers and I really consider it a privilege to be one of the first few online marketers to present the merits of online channels like search, PPC and email to the traditional offline marketing crowd.

I’ll probably end up talking about why the sacred direct marketing triangle of List + Offer + Creative works as effective online as it does off (if not better), then introduce why web analytics is a validation mechanism never before seen in traditional channels.

It should be great…but don’t take my word for it ;) participate!