Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
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3 Tips for Succeeding with Direct Mail
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on Thursday, December 8, 2011 
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One of my favorite people in the print industry, Margie Dana, wrote a fantastic piece this week that was titled “How Direct Mail Packs a Punch in 7 Ways“.
If you are looking for ways to improve your marketing efforts, her article is a must-read. It provides inspiration and incentive for companies to use direct mail to reach their prospects and customers.
If Margie’s post does inspire you, I’d like to share a few tips with you as well. Here they are!
3 Tips for Succeeding with Direct Mail
For companies that run direct mail campaigns, the ability to effectively measure the highs and lows of those campaigns is vital to the success of their advertising as a whole. The following tips will have you well on your way toward making the most out of your company’s direct mail marketing:
- Utilize a tracking software system that will measure the statistics of your campaign easily and efficiently: Yes, there is no denying that it may cost less money to send emails than it does to send direct mail. However, if the act of sending direct mail to your audience could bring you better results, wouldn’t you want to do that? Of course! However, we must put forth the effort to prove that is true.This may primarily mean that we set up our campaigns and landing pages in a way so that direct mail responses are measured differently than responses to your emails, social media posts, or activities on another channel.
Response mechanisms such as QR Codes and personalized URLs can help us measure direct mail effectiveness as well!
- Select a focused audience versus conducting a blind mailing effort, thus increasing the potential for successful contacts: The days of spray-and-pray must be a thing of the past. This is certainly true from a budgetary perspective. But it also should be true from the fact that technology makes it easier than ever to create targeted, personalized materials and by doing so, we can increase our response rates.By segmenting our audiences, we can deliver direct mail pieces that may have text, images, and offers that are relevant to each individual.
- Ensure that your direct mail pieces are both informative and aesthetically pleasing: We must never forget marketing fundamentals. Sure, it can be fun to get excited about new marketing channels (i.e. I’m so excited that I can add a PURL to my mailers!) However, we must not neglect putting forth an effort to ensure our direct mail pieces look good and tell a compelling story.
These are just a few of the ways that companies can successfully incorporate direct mail into their marketing mix. If you’d like to learn more or perhaps see how interlinkONE’s software can help you in that regard, click here.
Tags A Return to Strategy
“Tactics, Tactics, Tactics…. Everywhere I look, all I see is tactics!”
Perhaps you have also felt that same way recently. We hear about tactics across nearly every marketing channel out there. QR Codes. Personalized URLs. Augmented Reality. SMS/Text-Messaging. Mobile Email. Social Media Advertising.
Those are just a few of the terms that we hear and talk about quite frequently in the marketing world. I know that I can often get quite excited about them!
But, while there is nothing wrong with diving in and understanding specific tactics, we run the danger of thinking of those things as bright and shiny objects that can solve all of our problems!
Instead of falling into that trap, we must be willing to increase the amount of effort and focus that we put on having a strategy.
Long-Term Solutions Come From Having a Strategy
If our business primarily consists of providing marketing services to our customers, we certainly need to pay close attention to new tools and technologies that could improve our offerings.
However, we must ensure that the things we do add (for example, a QR Code or PURL on a postcard) are not treated simply as add-ons. Rather, we should focus on integrating them into the overall marketing strategy that supports our customer’s goals.
Often, the development of a strategy will consist of us asking critical questions. The answers to those questions will not only help us decide which tools and technologies should be used, but also, how should we best use them.
Yes, I realize that some clients may come to you with a fully thought-out marketing strategy. But in today’s world, many CMO’s are running around at a frantic pace; thus, they could benefit by having a service provider offer some consultation and suggestions. If you do find yourself in that position, here are 4 steps that could help you develop and/or analyze a marketing strategy for your clients:
- Describe the Business: This sounds simple, but it’s crucial. It may help you to define key characteristics that affect branding and messaging.
- Define the Goal: The goal will help us to avoid using a new tool or tactic simply because it’s new. Rather, it will help us to ensure that the reasons we decide to do (or not do) something are done for a reason.
- Understand Who the Audience is And Where They Are: Think about QR Codes for a second. If your client is going to be placing print advertisements inside of a subway station where there is no cell service, do QR Codes really make sense? Or, if you are going to send information that is highly sensitive or private in nature, will a personalized URL actually cause people to not respond?
- How Will You Measure Success?: As a service provider, we may be constantly looking for ways to demonstrate and prove our value. However, in the rush to incorporate a new tactic, we may overlook what steps are necessary to help us measure the effectiveness of a specific tactic. By answering this question ahead of time, we will increase our chances of being able to present valuable data to our customers during the marketing campaign.
These are just a few of the questions that can help us to develop and deliver solutions that increase our revenue now and in the future. I hope that you find them find helpful! Yes, there will be always be new tactics that catch our attention, create some buzz, and get us excited (me included!). But no matter what the tactics are, having the right strategy will help to put us on the right path.
Advice from DMA 2011 – Plan and Measure
One of my favorite parts of attending the DMA 2011 conference in Boston this week was having the chance to listen to some very successful marketing agencies present case studies of their campaigns.
Some of the case studies involved big brands that were looking to capitalize on their expensive sponsorships; others involved companies that were trying to take make the best of a natural disaster; and others involved helping people in less-fortunate lands.
What Made Them Succeed
There were a number of reasons why the campaigns that were discussed at DMA succeeded. Yes, most of them had impressive creative. There was clearly a helpful and compelling message on the media. But certainly, the creative and messaging differed greatly across each effort.
But there is something that all of the successful case studies had in common: the agencies spent a lot of effort focusing on planning and measurement.
Wait. Are You Saying that Not All Marketers Plan and Measure?
In today’s world of businesses, many of us are wearing many hats. We may have less resources available to us than from a few years ago. We may feel more pressure from CEOs and VPs of Sales to get more campaigns out the door.
There may be nothing we can do to change those realities. Thus, it is absolutely possible that we may cut corners to simply get things “shipped”. We may start to simply view our marketing initiatives as one big checklist.
However, what truly matters in the end is not if we simply do things. But what matters is if we actually do things that make a positive impact.
How We Can Focus on the Right Things
The best way to create a successful campaign is to truly have a strategy and plan ahead of time (or, we could just hope to get lucky). We need to let our imaginations go a little wild. We need to think of our audience as more than a list of records in a database. We need to be willing to analyze what we hope to accomplish, what we could possibly accomplish, and then set a goal.
Then, we must be willing to spend time truly analyzing and measuring the results of our efforts.
While that may sound obvious, I’m sure that many of us would agree that we often need to quickly move on to what’s next… That might be the next channel, technology, or simply the next campaign. We miss out on identifying what has recently worked (or not), which means we lose out on finding valuable data that could improve our future campaigns.
Planning and measurement might never be sexy. But if the case studies presented at DMA 2011 were any indication, they are absolutely two of the most critical components of a successful campaign.
Can Direct Mail Help Your Website?
A recent report from GI Insight provided a couple of statistics to reinforce the effectiveness of direct mail.
While those with “ink in their veins” may wish the percentage was higher, I think that seeing this quote is fairly encouraging: “47% of UK consumers said that they are ‘more often than not’ driven to a website by something they have received” in the mail.
I also enjoyed this one: “43% said that they kept direct mail around the household in order to remind them to visit the company’s website in future.”
Yes, while social networks, emails, mobile, and other channels will continue to also drive people to the web, those channels may not necessarily have the ability to “stick” around someone’s house to remind them to visit a company’s website at a later date.
Of course, marketers may ask this question — how do I know if my direct mail efforts are driving traffic to a website?
Three Ways To Track Direct Mail and Its Impact On Your Website
Use Google Analytics to Benchmark Direct Traffic
Prior to sending out the direct mail piece, monitor and record the Direct Traffic that Google Analytics reports on your corporate website.
Then, monitor those numbers as the direct mailer starts to land in people’s mailboxes. While this is not going to tell you exactly how many people hit the website because they saw your URL on the mail piece, this approach may help you to gauge if the needle moved at all.
Yes, it may sound simple and less than scientific… but it’s something that should and can be done by anyone.
Use Personalized or Unique URLs on the Direct Mail Piece
Rather than printing your corporate website URL on the direct mail piece, use a custom or unique URL that will only be promoted to the people receiving the direct mailer.
That URL may simply serve as a redirect to the corporate website once it’s entered. Or maybe it points to a landing page that is embedded into one of your site’s pages.
This activity should help to serve as a good indicator if the mail piece made an impact.
Ask People!
This approach is often simple to execute and can result in solid data… but it’s often overlooked. In the contact forms that are provided on your website, add a question that asks people how they heard about you.
Also, train and encourage sales reps to ask new prospects that request more information if they received the mailer and then record it.
Moving Forward
Of course, direct mail’s impact isn’t necessarily measured only in the few days that it lands at the recipient’s house. As the 43% statistic above shows, people may store and return to that mailer at a later date — perhaps even weeks later. Thus, keep an eye on website traffic over the long-term to see if the impact of the mailer is still being felt.
Enhancements for QReate & Track: Organizing Your QR Codes
We are happy to share the news that we will soon be releasing enhancements to our QR Code management system – QReate & Track.
To help support our growing community of QReate & Track customers, we are releasing enhancements that will help users better organize, manage, and report on the QR Codes that they create and track.
Here are a few of the features that will be included in this upcoming release:
- Folder Management: Customers will be able to create and manage folders to better organize and store their QR Codes. For example, folders could be used to describe campaigns, product types, and more.
- QR Code Folder Assignment: Customers will have access to new fields that allow them to assign new QR Codes and existing QR Codes to multiple folders.
- Cleaner Navigation: With the growing popularity of QR Codes, our customers have been creating them more frequently than ever before. Thus, users now have the ability to access QR Codes via the Collapsable/Expandable folders, as opposed to searching a long list of each code on the left-navigation menu.
- Trash Feature: For various reasons, users may want to inactivate or remove a QR Code after a period of time. These codes will now be displayed in the Trash folder to keep them out-of-sight by default.
We have already received some positive feedback from customers regarding these features. All users will have access to them by the middle of next week.
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