Gravy isn't good for your arteries, but it is good for direct marketing efforts....

It bubbles up naturally from your "cooking." Lots of times, gravy can't be tracked to specific promotional efforts, but all of a sudden there's an increase in profitability.

Here's an example of gravy from the old days. Way back when, we used to run print ads to sell books. For every coupon we received (before use of 800#s and the Internet), we would also generate from one to four sales of the book through bookstores. Your P&L was based on how many coupons came back. If you received enough, you continued advertising and everything else was gravy.

In today's world, we have a lot more ways to sop up the gravy. We send out direct mail with a response form, fax number, 800# and a specific URL. The prospect opts for the latter, clicks onto the landing page, but is distracted. Later on, the prospect returns to the site (but not the landing page), clicks on a few different pages, finds a different product than that offered in the mail, and purchases. You have no way to track this back to the mail unless you compare recent customers with your mail promotion tapes.

Conversely, suppose your Web site offers a free e-newsletter for prospects. Naturally, you try to convert those prospects to buyers online. You don't have postal address for most of them. Now you do direct mail to rented prospect lists. Response is higher than you ordinarily encounter. Many of those prospects were really sold online, but they ordered through the mail, and you have no way of knowing without installing very expensive tracking. Gravy is great.

In the b2b arena, there are several different varieties of gravy. One is obviously pass-along of a direct mail promotion or email blast within a company. Then there's the effect of trade show marketing. Prospects go to a show, they see your booth and maybe even talk to you, but don't go any further. A month later they see a direct mail package and respond. The gravy - higher response - comes from your presence at the trade show, but you can't track that.

So direct marketing is measurable and accountable, and sometimes it isn't… and if it produces gravy, that's good.