Lisa Spiller is a professor of marketing in the Joseph W. Luter III School of Business at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. She has been teaching direct marketing courses to undergraduate business students for more than 25 years and has helped her university pioneer a major in direct and interactive marketing. Dr. Spiller’s marketing students have won the coveted Collegiate Gold ECHO Award from the Direct Marketing Association in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2011, and the Collegiate Silver ECHO Award in 2002. Her students have also received the Gold Collegiate Marketing Award for Excellence and Innovation (MAXI) from the Direct Marketing Association of Washington Educational Foundation (DMAW-EF) in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2011; the Collegiate Silver MAXI Award in 2002, 2003 and 2010; and the Guy Yolton Creative Direct Mail Award in 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2009.

Spiller was named the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (DMEF) Robert B. Clark Outstanding Direct Marketing Educator in 2005. She was the inaugural recipient of the DMAW-EF O’Hara Leadership Award for Direct and Interactive Marketing Education in 2008. She has received awards for her teaching, including the inaugural CNU Alumni Society Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring in 2007; Faculty Advisor Leader Awards from the DMEF in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2011; a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1997 from the DMEF; and the Elmer P. Pierson Outstanding Teacher Award in 1987 from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Her research studies, the majority of which have been related to some aspect of direct and database marketing, have been published in numerous journals. Dr. Spiller served on the Abstract Editorial Board of the Journal of Interactive Marketing for ten years, was an Academic Representative on the DMEF Board of Trustees for two years, and has been a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the DMAW-EF for more than a decade.

Martin Baier has been a direct marketing consultant and educator since retiring in 1987 as Executive Vice President of the Marketing Group at Old American Insurance Company. He is a founder of the Center for Direct Marketing Education and Research in the Henry Bloch School of Business and Public Administration of the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), where he served for 25 years as adjunct professor.

His Elements of Direct Marketing was published by McGraw-Hill in 1983. A Japanese edition was published by Nikkei in Tokyo in 1985; an international student edition was published in Singapore in 1986. His How to Find and Cultivate Customers through Direct Marketing was published by NTC Business Books in 1996. Contemporary Database Marketing: Concepts and Applications, coauthored with Kurtis Ruf and Goutam Chakraborty, was published by Racom Books in 2001.

He has taught direct marketing at many universities and has conducted numerous seminars throughout the United States and in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. His presentation of “ZIP Code—New Tool for Marketers” in the January–February 1967 Harvard Business Review created substantial interest and caused the Kansas City Star to name him the “Father of ZIP Code Marketing.”

He was inducted into the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame (DMEF) in 1989. The DMEF presented him its Ed Mayer Award, and the Direct Marketing Insurance Council named him Direct Marketing Insurance Executive of the Year, both in 1983. The Mail Advertising Service Association honored him with its Miles Kimball Award in 1990. The Ed Sisk Award for Direct Marketing Vision was presented to him by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington Educational Foundation in 1994. He was awarded the Andi Emerson Award, for contribution of outstanding service to the direct marketing creative community. In 1995, he was elected International Fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing (UK) in recognition of exceptional services to the profession. The New England Direct Marketing Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.