When Disaster Strikes: Jim’s 4th Annual Preparedness Guide to Surviving a Disaster

By Jim Gilbert

5. Work with your call center to make sure it can operate if disaster strikes. If you use an external call center, inquire about its disaster plan.

6. If your call center is on-site, consider hiring a backup call-center staff to field calls in case of emergency (this one saved my client’s bacon a few years ago).

7. If you host your own Web site, have a plan in place if the lights go out. Find out what your ISP does if it loses its electricity.

8. If your business is in a disaster-prone area, buy a generator.

9. If your business isn’t in a disaster-prone area, contact any vendors that are. Disasters, either natural or man-made, can interrupt your workflow with printers, the post office and all other vendors.

10. Don’t mail into disaster-impacted areas, because they won’t respond.

11. If you’ve already mailed and a disaster occurs, adjust your projections downward.

Bottom line for all this, remember my motto (or is it the Boy Scout motto?): ALWAYS BE PREPARED!

Jim Gilbert is president of Gilbert Direct Marketing Inc., a full-service catalog and direct marketing agency. His LinkedIn profile can be viewed at www.linkedin.com/in/jimwgilbert or you can post a comment here or e-mail him at jimdirect@aol.com.

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Jim Gilbert Author's page Jim Gilbert has been creating direct marketing programs that drive superior ROI for almost 30 years. Fluent in consumer or B-to-B, creative, operations, and analytics, he marries the strategic and tactical sides of direct and social media marketing in a seamless fashion that gets results. He's CEO of a multidiscipline direct marketing agency, Gilbert Direct Marketing, Inc., which focuses on direct mail, catalogs, DRTV, telemarketing, print, alternative direct marketing media and social media marketing. Jim has been involved in start-ups, expansions and turnarounds, and is an expert in helping multichannel marketers get to the "next level." He's a former adjunct professor, teaching direct marketing at Miami International University, and is President of the Board of Directors of the Florida Direct Marketing Association. Jim loves to talk direct marketing, and has done many lectures on direct and social media marketing.