When, after finishing his opening keynote, Direct Marketing Association (DMA) President John Greco brought onstage former Chairman Kelly Browning, I worried that the DMA had replaced Martha Stewart without telling us (In my defense, Browning wasn’t on the agenda!). The first two morning keynotes highlighted the accomplishments and ambitions of the association; then (finally!), over an hour later, Martha Stewart took the stage.

Founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Stewart’s presentation led up the fact that connecting everything from print to digital to broadcast to merchandise creates a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. But before all that, she started by telling the story of her childhood, tracing back to the perfectionism she inherited from her father, and the efficiency she inherited from her mother. Her first jobs included modeling and working for a New York stock broker (She conveniently side-stepped her later, more troubling experience in this field), which she left to pursue a catering business out of her Connecticut home, where, she boasted, she soon became the neighborhood caterer of choice.

As she explored other culinary ventures and her experience grew, Stewart was contributing articles to magazines like House Beautiful, Glamour, and Mademoiselle. It was in these magazines pieces, that Stewart was able to capture what she called “an ephemeral business” – “You create these beautiful dishes,” she said, “then people eat them and they’re gone.”

In 1982, Stewart published her first book, Entertaining. “It was a book that I needed, my friends needed,” she says, and went so far as to call it a book “every single woman in American needed.”

By 1990, Stewart got her magazine, Martha Stewart Living in a partnership with Time, Inc. At first, she recalled, publishers criticized her for not acquiring enough advertisements. “But I said it will come, and in two years, we were profitable, we were listened to, and we were popularized all over the country,” she said. That year was also when Stewart launched her television show. Television, she said, was an “excellent synergistic aside” to publishing. All the research and writing for the magazine served as material to be played out live on TV. Repurposing—always a good thing.

Direct marketing helped fuel growth of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia for nearly two decades: The company has sent over 300 million emails and over 25 million mail pieces to consumers, all with what she claims to be excellent response rates. (Stewart, or at least her organization, is also a member of the DMA.)

Stewart championed the use of social media, proudly sharing that she had accumulated a million followers within five months of signing onto Twitter and showing a picture her with Founder Biz Stone as a guest on her show. She commended Twitter for ability to generate huge referral traffic and called the platform “the Walmart of social media” – implying that it can reach a massive audience at “no” cost.

Her blog is not just for publicity, she assured, but is “really meant to inspire and inform.” Even her dogs Francesca and Sharkey have a blog called The Daily Wag. “My dogs work 8 hours a day,” she shared (The dogs get primped and readied for photo shoots and field trips.) I took that as a joke until Stewart said, “If you live in my house, you always have to do something productive,” which sounded a bit too frightening and a bit too real. (At some point toward the latter half of her presentation, the power on the laptop went out and Stewart’s computer screen went black. She requested help from the technicians backstage and made friendly jokes to which the audience laughed along—I, however, waited nervously.)

Stewart admitted she had some uncertainty about the future of social media. “I don’t know where blogging will go,” she said, especially since many of her readers are logging in during work hours and stricter corporate policies may strip those readers away. “I don’t know how we’re going to attract those same viewers and users,” Stewart said.

The reason Stewart went with the name “Omnimedia” is because she wanted to strive for “nothing less than omnipresence.” The concept, she said, “makes us sound full of it; but for a company like ours, it’s a terribly important thing. All publishing companies now are looking for omnipresence…the ability to reach consumers across all media. It’s a very interesting platform for [them].”

Though the company still receives roughly a million emails and letters from magazine readers each year, it has a younger audience to consider. “We want to be there for them,” she said, and being there means being on the Internet. “[We’re going through] a period of great transition,” she said, which calls for constantly evolution and the search for new opportunities. “When you’re through changing, you’re through.”