5 Best Practices in Direct Mail Design
I just read this article on the 5 Best Practices in Direct Mail Design and had to pass it along. With all of the digital advances in direct marketing grabbing our attention (and for good reason), including triggered communications/emails, it’s nice to re-visit what makes the printed direct mail piece work — especially one that’s tied into a multichannel strategy. Here I go again on that integration soapbox!
One or all of these 5 tips may help you get out of a rut in your direct mail design, packaging and copywriting.
Just remember: Without relevency and getting the recipient to “stop and see what’s in it for me,” your awesome layout, packaging and copywriting might just be perfuming a pig.
All Aboard the SEM Bandwagon!
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Lead Management, Search Engine Marketing, analytics, integrated marketing, paid search, search engine optimization
A recent Forrester study shows what all of us already know. Marketers will continue to shift dollars from traditional media and traditional direct marketing to online direct marketing.
I like Target Marketing Magazine’s research summary overviewing the growth factors in SEM, SEO, online advertising (a.k.a., Pay-Per-Click) and Email Marketing which are among the listed 16 online marketing trends.
More than 80% of marketers are using paid search and SEO and plan to expand search into more segments. As consumers search more online, Google’s AdWord inventory continues to grow. All music to marketers’ ears as you expand your paid search and SEO efforts.
Online advertising, “performance-based” media buys and integrated email marketing are also slated for substantial growth through 2014.
Hot 2010 Marketing Trends Getting Hotter
Filed under: Data Cleansing and Enhancement, Digital Lead Generation, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Lead Management, List Strategy, Search Engine Marketing, analytics, integrated marketing, paid search
Targeting – Measurement – Channel Integration – Prospecting
These four trends are what ICS is all about and what we’ve been preaching for increased sales lift, better Marketing ROI and overall business growth. Now, direct marketers across the country are finally starting to see these four tenets as "hot trends for 2010" according to Deliver Magazine.
Targeting — With our advanced analytics, data management tools and direct marketing experience, you can target on a one-to-one level with specific customers and prospects using a tailored offer at the right time in the customer’s preferred channel. Plus, you can focus your marketing dollars on targeting your most valuable prospects.
Measurement/Analysis – Data not only gives you the clearest view of your customers for targeted marketing, but collecting and analyzing data is critical in matching-back sales to specific marketing efforts. Now more than ever, marketers are on the hook to prove that every dollar you spend is growing the business.
Integration – Marketers who execute cross channel campaigns experience a 50 – 400% better response rate than singularly focused campaigns. To learn about integration trends and what leading companies are doing in multichannel integration, view our on-demand webinar: "Transforming Practices in Integrated Marketing Communications."
Prospecting — I like the quote in this article, "Today, everybody at every stage of life is open to marketing." However, you can’t have great sales lead generation without well-honed targeting AND channel integration. Lead generation is where it all comes together… in my opinion, this is where this article misses the 2010 mark BIG TIME. Plus, online lead generation didn’t even get a mention! SEO, SEM and paid search (where customers are actively searching your product/service) are only getting hotter in 2010 and beyond.
Top 10 Email Appending Mistakes to Avoid
Filed under: Data Cleansing and Enhancement, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, List Strategy
This article, Top 10 Email Appending Mistakes to Avoid, from ChiefMarketer.com not only tells you how to avoid email appending mistakes, but also gives helpful tips on what to look for in an Email Marketing Services Provider.
Whether or not you choose ICS for your next email marketing project, I want to make sure that your investment and reputation are protected.
So as you’re putting those finishing touches on your 2010 marketing plans, here are few critical points to consider when choosing an email marketing partner. And while this article focuses on email lists, the same cautionary tips can apply to almost any direct marketing area.
2010 DMA Should Be Interesting
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Marketing Technology Solutions, Search Engine Marketing, Uncategorized, integrated marketing
2009 Direct Marketing Association's Annual Conference Oct. 17-21
I can’t remember a year where we have had as much change in our marketing world. With the economy struggling, this alone has had significant impact. Add onto this the evolution of new digital tools such as Search, Social Media and Mobile and this year’s Direct Marketing Association’s national convention is bound to be interesting.
Yet my initial day at the conference reinforces much of what I thought. While new tools and mediums evolve, much of the foundation for targeted marketing remains the same:
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Test, test, test: Continues to be the foundation for targeted media. With today’s powerful analytics, you can set up your testing strategies to optimize your marketing efforts whether it is your direct marketing acquisition effort, search or your web site.
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Permission-based: Permission-based marketing comes in the form of many names now (i.e. opt-in, preference centers, social media invitations), but a constant thread has been forming in marketing for over a decade. Today’s marketers realize that putting the consumer in the driver’s seat of their communications is the key in today’s world. Now there are just more targeted consumer options to opt-into than ever before.
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Technology Centric: Technology continues to drive our advances on many fronts. More user friendly tools to use without tapping the IT department. Increased abilities to personalize the medium to known customer attributes, easier and lower cost tools to manage all these efforts.
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Integration: A couple of decades ago, it was integrating targeted marketing with mass media to deliver improved performance. Today, these integration points are still important, but can be taken much further. Web site integration, retail point of sale, digital targeted media campaigns are now all thrown into the mix as well.
My point in all this is that while times are changing, likely 99.9+ percent of what we see at this year’s DMA will be based on the foundation already set. Should be an interesting time to see how the industry is doing and where the experts see it all going. From my first day in attendance, what is being touted as “new” looks very familiar.
Advantages of Creating an Integrated Marketing Database for Your Business
Filed under: Data Cleansing and Enhancement, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Marketing Technology Solutions, Uncategorized
Integrated marketing is creating growing complications for most businesses to manage their customer data. Customer Email data management requirements for opt-outs and bounces are often difficult to maintain, and creating intelligent landing pages for customers to provide you with updated customer data adds yet another level of complexity.
In our opinion, one of the easiest ways for organizations to address these new complexities is to create a replicated marketing database driven from your enterprise customer data management tools. Rather than trying to make your enterprise tools something that they are typically not meant to be, creating a replicated marketing database provides the security and fully functioning marketing features for integrated electronic and traditional communications to your customer base.
While you may be concerned about costs, we find that this approach provides significant advantages:
- Typically costs much less than trying to customize your own enterprise system
- Can be launched much quicker and with less hassle than changes to your own system.
- Immediately offers more features (i.e. Landing pages for customer email and general updates, customer preference centers, activity reporting, demographically enhanced customer data) that would require even more costs and development time if done internally
Given the growing demands for integrated marketing communications, you are likely looking at this area if you haven’t already set a strategy for your organization. We recommend that you consider this approach when you do.
Feel free to give us a call to discuss options in this area, or listen to our recent webinar How Changing Communications Trends Drive Integrated Marketing ROI for more concrete Direct Marketing Association facts in this area. You will also find an overview of ICS’s Integrated Communications Platform (ICP) which may be consideration for your business as well.
Leveraging Legacy “In-Market Shopper” Data for Automotive
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead Management, List Strategy, analytics
It has been an interesting Summer in the Automotive Marketing space. Tough to be in Michigan and not be impacted by the challenges faced to jumpstart this business sector.
The focus of today’s message is using Legacy In Market Shopper data in the Automotive Space. Typically, Automobile Manufacturers use the freshest data coming from sources like CarsDirect and Autobytel when prospecting for automotive sales. This makes sense, as they are likely to still be shopping for a vehicle … and influencing the prospect to consider your brand is a proven email and direct marketing strategy.
Through the past few years, we have developed an enhanced legacy database for automotive prospecting. While this might not make sense to you at first, our experience with the data has proven it to be a source of significant power for automotive prospecting:
- First, In-Market Shopper data represents a massive pool of people that historically shop for new cars. As we know in this space from our years of registration data experience, historic new car shoppers are most likely still new car buyers. That factor by itself is powerful.
- Second, Brand History is a very important indicator of future buying preferences. If you have a history of considering Mazda (for example), you are very likely to consider the brand for future new car considerations.
- Finally, with Enhanced Data, we can utilize shopping history and clustering products such as Mosaic or Personicx to analyze and identify those top clusters of the brand competitive set of the product you are focusing on. A fairly straight forward approach that has proven to yield excellent results.
While legacy In-Market Shopping data by itself is considered weak, we can use our experience and data enhancement capabilities to turn this data into very productive contributors to your email and direct marketing initiative. While you can take my word for it, I encourage you to consider testing these approaches in your next email or direct marketing intiative.
Tips & Tactics for Launching a Google AdWord Campaign
Filed under: Digital Lead Generation, Direct Marketing, General Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, integrated marketing, paid search
- How to use online paid search to generate qualified sales leads
- How you can :
- Tricks for choosing the right keywords, ad text and URLs
- How to track your traffic and ROI
- How to put it all together and ensure success
– Target geographically
– Control your budget
– Qualify Website traffic
– Pause, resume and edit your campaign anytime
Are you ready for “Cash for Clunkers”?
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, List Management, List Strategy, integrated marketing
According to the Detroit News on July 2, 2009, June auto sales show that consumers are holding-off on purchases until the Cash for Clunkers program gets started.
“Consumers encouraged by promising economic signs headed back to dealer showrooms last month, but sales sputtered in late June as prospective buyers waited for the government to introduce its cash-for-clunkers incentives.”
This was a timely article for me as we were just putting the finishing touches on ICS AutoNet’s new data card for our “Cash for Clunkers” prospect list.
Obviously, it’s in the best interest of these consumers who qualify for this program to wait for the “clunker cash.” As soon as this program starts, they’ll be ready to purchase.
So, hopefully auto marketers and dealers realize that the time to connect with these consumers is right now.
Through ICS AutoNet’s self-reported data, our “Cash for Clunkers” list allows dealers access to auto ownership and leasing information that State DMVs can no longer provide. Plus, we specifically designed this file to target consumers who may qualify for the government program. We can connect dealers to owners of vehicles with targeted makes, models and vehicle years from 2002 and earlier within a specified radius of the dealership.
Our list is derived from a comprehensive master file compiled from multiple Shelby-compliant sources and offers more than 100 million records. Each month, a million fresh records are added to the data file – making it an effective marketing tool for one-time promotions or ongoing campaigns.
ICS AutoNet’s Self-reported data file has been successfully applied in automotive marketing, consumer marketing and service-related programs. Following is an overview of available selects:
- Make and Model
- Vehicle Year 2002 and before
- Odometer
- Postal and telephone; Email available upon request.
- Owner demographics and lifestyle (age, income and geography)
List pricing starts at $115 / M. Please note that we include make, model, vehicle year and geography at no extra charge. A complete data card is available for more information.
The Importance of Developing Handraisers for your Business
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Lead Management, Marketing Technology Solutions
So few companies fully understand and leverage the power of developing “handraisers”. In our world, this is someone who is interested in your company’s product, but not ready to purchase your products or services at this time. It applies to just about every business segment and industry.
I am sure you can relate this to your every day shopping experiences. You are shopping at a store or online for something you are looking for. Through your shopping experience you are exposed to the product or service, but you are just not ready to pull the trigger at this time. Possibly you want to shop around a bit, or receive additional details on the items you are looking at. While we tend to think retail, it could be any thing from a new car, to a charitable cause, to a service you need for your business.
If you haven’t developed a Handraiser channel for your business, you really need to make it a priority. It is typically not expensive, and it will provide you access to a very productive prospect segment. We typically see a handraiser Channel converting to customers a 5 to 15 times the best targeted competitive prospects. Often, they will even outperform your current customers when soliciting new business.
Where do you get started? Typically business owners will provide an opportunity within their website or retail location for prospects/shoppers to receive more information or to stay in touch with the company. This can be as simple as a sign up for a newsletter or an opportunity to receive “special value offers” from the company.
To fully maximize the potential of the Handraiser channel, every prospect / shopper touchpoint should provide an invitation to easily engage in this communication. Examples of these might include:
- A link on your website that offers prospects an avenue to stay in touch
- Point of Sale within your storefront that invites shoppers to sign up for special offers
- Reference in your marketing efforts (newletter, mass media, targeted media) to go to a landing page to sign up for ongoing special values
Handraiser Data Capture Example
The Email channel is an excellent avenue to communicate with this audience … taking advantage of the low cost and delivery speed of the medium.
Have you developed a Handraiser channel for your Business? While many businesses have integrated these systems as a part of the Lead Management process, still the majority of businesses have not. If you are one of these organizations, you are missing out on a powerful and inexpensive way to develop new customers.
