insights.
David Vogel is a direct marketing strategist and internet marketer at Mail Print. David works with B2C and B2B customers to create integrated direct marketing campaigns that include direct mail, email, and Personalized URLs. David also specializes in Search Engine marketing and website development for Mail Print and their customers.
Homepage: http://www.mailprint.com
Jul 21st
In a recent post from Seth Godin, the influential author and speaker divulges a main difference between mass marketers and direct marketers: the process they follow in creating and scaling their message to reach their audiences.
The comparison below is based on Godin’s main points:
Mass Marketing: |
Direct Marketing: |
| Bets on large-scale deployment to achieve success. | Relies on initial small-scale testing to achieve success. |
| Needs heavy initial resource allocation to push message to entire audience, across multiple channels, simultaneously. | Needs low initial resource allocation; deployment scaled to entire audience as results are proven. |
| Relies on achieving results on the first attempt. | Continually improves results by tracking, measuring, and revising. |
| Success (brand awareness, “buzz,” and sometimes conversion rate) not determined until end of campaign. | Success (conversion rate) is determined at beginning, based on test results. |
With tighter budgets and continued pressure to produce measurable results, the safer, predictable direct marketing process would seem a no-brainer. However, everyone from small business owners dabbling in marketing to seasoned advertising veterans are tempted to rely on their personal taste and gut instinct to determine what will appeal to and motivate the masses. This temptation is natural, but not justifiable, according to Godin:
“The key distinction [between direct marketing and mass marketing] is when you know it’s going to work. The mass marketer doesn’t know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning. The mass marketer is betting on thousands of tiny cues, little clues, and unrecorded (but vital) conversations. The direct marketer is measuring conversion rates from the first day.
“That’s the reason we often default to acting like mass marketers. We’re putting off the day of reckoning, betting on the miracle around the corner, spending our time and energy on the early steps without the downside of admitting failure to the boss.
“Of course, just because it’s our default doesn’t mean it’s right. Business to business marketing is almost always better if you treat it like direct marketing. Most websites that do conversion as well. Same with non-profit fundraising.”
So, as it turns out, the distinction between mass and direct marketing is less about the size of your audience, and more about the process you follow to determine the right messaging for them. Are you willing to devote the time needed to test your message, and do you have the humility and persistence needed to acknowledge a failed test and try again? If so, then you’re on your way to achieving more powerful, scalable marketing.
You can read Godin’s complete post here.
Jul 6th
For the marketing community, social media is the newest, shiniest toy we’ve had in a while, and most of us are rushing to learn how to utilize each new social platform to our advantage.
Marketing budgets have begun shifting as well. Of the participants in the 2009 PRWeek/MS&L Social Media Survey 31% reported shifting in marketing and communications budgets to add social media to their mix, with 48% of their social budgets being pulled from past advertising budgets, 41% from direct marketing, 29% from media buying, and 18% from PR.
Despite these budget shifts, marketing executives surveyed in the study still say they believe each of the more traditional direct marketing, advertising and PR channels have a greater impact on the success of their company or brand.
Source: 2009 PRWeek/MS&L Social Media Survey
So even though marketers believe that direct marketing and other traditional tactics are more effective, they’re willing to divert budget to social media. Is this a rational decision to test new marketing tactics, or are marketers just succumbing to peer pressure and a search for “the next big thing?”
According to the study, 39% of respondents reported that “they are not convinced of the value or ROI” of social media. This may be due to the notorious difficultly of tracking and calculating conversions influenced by social media.
There are many commonly accepted case studies that have shown effective use of social media for business initiatives, including:
With all of these business uses of social media, questions still remain about their actual revenue generation. As social marketing practices are honed and social tracking tools improve, this may change. However, it may not. Which leads us to…
Ready to test social media marketing for your organization? It's time to create a focused social marketing plan of attack.
So budgets are limited, and it’s time to start dividing your resources and time. Social marketing may be a winner for your audience and business model, and should probably be tested. So what percentages should you allocate to social marketing initiatives? Here are some suggestions:
If you’re achieving good ROIs for your direct marketing, PR or advertising, don’t reduce your budgets for these channels for something untested.
Is social marketing right for your business model and audience? There’s only one way to be sure. Start by allocating a portion of your budget, just as you would any test initiative.
Before you start, make sure you have clearly identified your objectives and success metrics. Then, instead of trying to engage in every social media platform, choose one or two specific actions to focus your efforts. Some examples:
Can you attribute new customers to your online interactions? Did traffic and conversion for your website increase? Have you increased foot traffic to your locations? If so, congratulations, it’s time to allocate more budget and increase your social marketing efforts. If not, it’s either time to test other social marketing tactics, or funnel your budget and efforts back to the marketing channels you know work for your business.
So now I want to know, what social media tactics have you tested for your business, and what type of results have you seen?
Jun 18th
The Direct Marketing Association released their annual Response Rate Trend Report this week, including some interesting findings about direct mail, email, paid search ads, Internet display ads, and telemarketing:
Perhaps the most interesting stats involve the costs of producing a lead or sale via different marketing channels. Many companies and marketers focus more on the per-piece cost of the different channels, instead of the end game of actual sales, which may account for the flood of marketing emails in my inbox/spam filter.
According to the report: “Catalogs had the lowest cost per lead/order of $47.61, just ahead of inserts at $47.69, email at $53.85, and postcards $75.32.”
What kind of response and conversion rates are you experiencing? What marketing channels are performing best for you? Share your insights by clicking the comment button.
May 6th
Staying in contact with your prospects and customers is key for building and maintaining revenue. However, it can also be an ongoing challenge and resource-draw for your sales and marketing teams. Check out the video below (or here) to learn how businesses are using Mail Print’s multi-channel marketing automation system to transform their lead nurturing and customer retention into automated, repeatable processes.
Mar 11th
Successful personalized marketing mixes right brain logic and left brain creative.
Highly-personalized marketing with relevant messaging, images and offers dramatically increases response rates… everyone agrees on this now, right? I mean, we’ve all read the case studies and white papers that prove it.
So why isn’t everyone doing it? For one, creating a highly-personalized marketing piece requires a creative staff brave enough to reach into the cold, sterile world of databases, segmentation and matrices, and then blend the two together. This is a serious feat of right brain/left brain, inspiration/intel, balance that can be difficult to achieve. But, as the research shows, double-digit response rates are attainable….
So I cornered several of our clients that create and produce highly-personalized marketing campaigns, and asked them for the top things they’d tell creatives about creating relevant, database-driven communications.
Here are their top five suggestions, ready for you to share with your design and marketing creatives:
Get a sample of your marketing database, and review all the options available to you. A good database could include information about their purchase history, preferences, and demographics; all info you can use to make your piece more relevant. Even simple databases can be segmented to create versioned messages and images; try region, number of employees and industry.
When adding variable fields to your designs, it’s important to know just how long – or short – the text may be that pulls in for each field. Ask your database team for a report of the longest and shortest entries for each variable field, and then proof your designs with these extremes included.
Splashing your recipient’s name across your creative can definitely capture their attention, and can be done very creatively and effectively. But some of the most effective personalized communications include hundreds or thousands of variables. If you have a strong database, some internal expertise, and a good partner, it’s time to test an intensely-variable piece.
Sooner, rather than later, call the Variable Data Printer, email service provider or direct mail marketer of your choice : ), and grill them on the process your creative will go through to be produced. Chances are, there are choices you’ll make that could negatively or positively affect the resulting pieces. Special Note: Make sure to ask them the best file formats for their workflow!
As you can tell, there’s a reason personalized marketing isn’t used by all of your competitors: it’s hard. But, it’s a lot easier once you’ve done it a few times. So start by working a couple of variables into piece before advancing to that dynamic, 1,000-variable piece you’ve been dreaming of. Starting simple will also ensure your process and hardware is correct and will prevent a server meltdown (ask me about that story sometime).
Haven’t read one of those reports about personalized marketing improving response rates? Let me recommend this case study or this white paper. Want to know more or add something to the list? Use the handy comment tool below.
Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dierkschaefer/ / CC BY 2.0
Mar 1st
And the winners are... the direct marketers whose 2010 marketing tactics reflect the lessons learned during 2009.
We recently received an email from the KCDMA (the local chapter of the Direct Marketing Association) notifying us that our three entries in their 2010 AMBIT competition are all winners. The awards ceremony is still more than a month away, so we’ll have to wait to find out the exact trophies we’ll be bringing home (we’re going for the gold!)
The notification email made me think back to last year’s big winners, and the direct marketing lessons each one represented. Unlike many competitions, which focus more on the aesthetic value of entries, the DMA competition is heavily-weighted towards actual results, such as response rates, ROI and revenue generation. So, the top awards of 2009 recognized direct marketing campaigns that really made a financial impact for businesses. Here are two lessons learned from 2009’s winners:
As Sprint’s Best In Show winner illustrated, direct mail marketing with substance (read “size”) can help you get your message past gatekeepers and make an impression on the decision makers. Like other bulky mail successes, Sprint’s “PB&J Wireless Integration” campaign made up for a high cost-per-piece with incredible response rates. The key to making a bulky piece like this worth it’s weight? Make sure your marketing database is clean and targeted and your piece is eye-catching and memorable.
Mail Print’s Most Innovative Solution award winner was one several entries that highlighted how personalized marketing can increase response rates. However, I think it was singled out for the Most Innovative Solution award because of the 5% purchase rate it achieved. The awarded campaign for the new Gladstone Community Center used personalized direct mail and PURLs (see our Portfolio for samples) to generate leads from a highly-targeted list. The key? Create a profile of the most likely purchaser of your product and service, and use demographic and geographic list selection to build a marketing database of people who match this profile. Then, market to them with highly-relevant messaging.
I’m looking forward to watching this year’s ceremony to see how many companies parlayed the lessons learned at last year’s competition into their past year’s initiatives. What direct marketing lessons did you learn during 2009, and how are you implementing them during 2010?
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Feb 1st
Google Analytics is great FREE tool for tracking website traffic and visitor behavior. However, with the recent addition of Annotations, Analytics is now a great tool for tracking how your direct mail campaigns and other marketing activities drive traffic to your website.
Annotations, which was released to Google Analytics users during January 2010, allows users to note events that may have affected website traffic within the timeline view of your website visitors, helping marketers, IT, and others explain peeks and dips.
Jan 25th
Automated marketing campaigns. Flexible customization options. API integrations. It turns out that conveying the benefits and features of a marketing communications portal is difficult without some visuals. So, we created a video about our solution for marketing campaign management, digital asset management, local store marketing and printing management. Critiques welcome….