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.
Triggered Communications Webinar & 5 Tips for Success
Filed under: Digital Lead Generation, Email Marketing, Marketing Technology Solutions, Uncategorized, integrated marketing
I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Triggered Communications is a great way to increase your email marketing’s timeliness, relevancy and ROI. To help get you started, we’re hosting a Webinar on April 15, 2010 at 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. EST — “How to Use Event Triggered Communications to Increase Email Relevancy, Response and Sales.”
We’ll show you how easy it is to set-up behaviorally triggered email messages that deliver the right message to the right subscriber at the exact moment he or she is most engaged and likely to respond using Listrak’s automated event triggered messaging solution.
You will learn how to:
- Add a powerful, automated email responder system to your integrated marketing mix
- Trigger specific email responses according to your customer’s behaviors or targeted events
- Have one-on-one conversations with each of your customers and prospects
- Increase your email’s relevancy, open rates and your sales
Participation in this webinar is free, but space is limited. So, reserve your seat today.
While we’re putting the finishing touches on our webinar, here are five tips from Target Marketing Magazine for Triggered Communications success.
- Thoughtfully defining your triggers – this is the heart of your program
- Prepare your sales team to handle these leads – without making customers feel like “they’re being stalked.” You want to your customer to be loyal to your brand and feel, “Hey, this company really gets me and understands my needs.” That’s a big difference from a creepy, “I’m-being-watched feeling!”
- Put contact frequency in your process so you don’t bug your best customer and burn-out your sales team
- Continually improve your triggered-based program using feedback from your best sales people
I’m excited about what Triggered Communications can do to grow our clients’ businesses and I’m looking forward to meeting you online on April 15 for the Webinar! I hope you can join us!
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.
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.
Triggered Communications Raise Email Response Rates and Conversions
Filed under: Email Marketing, General Marketing, Lead Management, List Strategy, Uncategorized, integrated marketing
There has been a lot of discussion from the recent DMA and around ICS regarding Triggered Communications. Why all the buzz? Quite simply it is driven from the successes that larger organizations are starting to see in this area.
While email response rates are continuing to be challenged, Triggered Communications are a key component to adding relevancy to the communications. And just like any form of communications, the more relevant and engaging, the more likely it is that you will get your message not only opened, but responded to.
A new conversation can be triggered from almost any customer touch point:
- External factors – website forms, shopping cart abandonment, customer service, etc.
- Messages – email activity (opens, clicks, unsubscribe, etc.), address change, etc.
- List – subscribe, profile update, and address change
- Link – specific link in email message
Once the “customer or prospect event” is captured, you can set a communications cadence around the key attributes of this event. These campaigns allow you to communicate with each subscriber individually based on his or her behavior or response. Because the messages are related to the specific action taken by the recipient, the conversations are natural and progressive, not sporadic and interruptive.
For example, a prospect clicked on an email to find out more information on your product, but did not take advantage of the offer. In the case of triggered communications, we can capture all “like prospects” and design communications cadences specific to this marketing situation.
These automated campaigns can be structured to follow up in a period of time after their initial response, or even so many days before the offer expires. Content can be specific to the link they clicked, or specific to the fact that they opened the email and didn’t click on a link. Testing strategies can be easily incorporated into the process as well.
According to Forrester Research’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2009-2014, marketers are taking on a more strategic leadership role in organizations because of their close connections to customers and prospects. Transactional, triggered email communications are on the rise because they improve open, click and conversion rates dramatically.
This builds off from the marketing foundation that a “handraiser” is one of your most effective prospect segments (from a percentage basis). Adding relevant and engaging follow-up communications will nuture leads through the sales cycles to drive more sales.
Give one of our account managers (or myself) a call to discuss triggered communications in more detail.
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.
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.
Multichannel Integration and Optimization: The Direct Marketer’s To-Do List that’s NEVER Done
Filed under: Email Marketing, General Marketing, Marketing Technology Solutions, integrated marketing
I’m sure you’re right there with me…there’s nothing more satisfying than crossing-off action items on my to-do lists – whether it’s in the office, at home and those places where both worlds blend.
But as marketers, that satisfaction is forever elusive when it comes to Web site optimization and making sure you’re being strategic across online and offline mediums. Why? Because your job should never be considered “done.”
At ICS, we’re constantly looking at our Web site optimization AND how our online marketing efforts integrate with our offline efforts… as well as, doing the same for our clients!
Maybe that’s why I thought you would like to see this article on 5 Ways to Get Your Website Up to Speed. Don’t let the title mislead you. It’s not just about online marketing, but more about multichannel integration and amending the age-old saying to: “targeting the right consumer with the right offer at the right time via the right channel.”
If you haven’t done so already, add these action items in this article to your “to-do” list and start reaping the sales benefits. If you’re not sure how to get started, just drop us a line and we can help.
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.
Volume down as prices go up for USPS. What does it mean for Marketers?
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing
May 11th is the date targeted for postage rates to go up across the board. The average rate increase is about 3.8% and does vary by segment. Of course, the behind the scenes story contributing to the increase is the decline in recent mail volume … with a 9.5 billion piece decline in mail for 2008. According to the USPS, “Declining mail volume was a symptom of the worsening national economy, particularly related to the financial and housing industries and to trends toward the use of electronic mail.”
While I am sure the economic climate is an element here (isn’t it the blame for everything these days?), I think the “trends toward the use of electronic mail” are an even greater longer-term issue for the USPS. And as they are forced to raise prices, it will not make matters any better.
Clearly, companies are having to look at every dollar these days. Utilizing the most customer-effective and cost-effective communications is certainly an area that nearly all companies are reviewing. And as most things go, technology continues to bring new solutions to the table that enable the small- to mid-sized companies to do what only the larger companies could do in years past.
What do you look for if you are one of those companies evaluating your customer communications?
- Likely you will want a partner to help navigate the increasing complex data management issues that come with multi-channel marketing integration
- The organization should also have deep expertise across traditional and digital channels (both technical and strategic)
We see the continuation of these trends (lower mail volumes, stronger use of electronic communcations) for the forseeable future. And yes, a continuation of the increases from USPS.
