If you want to push out a Q4 lead generation campaign you’d better hurry. From messaging to designs and mock-ups to to dropping pieces in the mail it takes a good two months to create a high-value direct marketing campaign–just in time for the holidays.
There is no such thing as a lost cause. It’s not too late to win business in 2011. Give us a ring and we’ll give it to you straight. What you need, how to tell the story, and when to get pieces in the mail.
Even though we build really awesome microsites and extremely creative campaigns (back pat, pat), all may be for naught if the list sucks.
“I don’t have a list,” is like death to a direct marketer. Nothing strikes fear into a marketing department faced with the very real need to introduce direct marketing into the mix. What to do? What to do?
Here’s our advice:
Build a list. Use cross media to turn an unkown into known. Fire up a viral microsite and promote it via FB, Twitter and LinkedIn. Put a banner on your homepage. Buy some clicks on Google. Before you know it you’re building an opt-in list you can use to prospect further.
Go to your customers. You already have this list. After working so hard to retain a customer don’t forget to nurture them. HINT: You can use the same microsite as above with variable copy that personalizes the campaign copy on a per customer basis. Let’s retain, up-sell and cross-sell people!
Buy a list. Oh, I know. It’s not pretty and might feel a little dirty, but effective. (Disclosure: Bought lists should be used only for direct mail and never, never email. Filter that list through a personalized microsite to weed out the bad apples and create a smaller, cleaner list for future engagement–follow up dm, email to opt-ins, social media, incentives an more. HINT#2: You can use the same microsite as above with variable copy personalizing the campaign for individual prospects.
That’s our advice. What’s yours?
Here’s a very recent case study made public by the folks at EUS Marketing. We use PURLs in 99% of the campaigns built for our customers. The advice we give our customers differs slightly than that laid out by EUS, but is based only on results and campaign success.
The case study does a great job of calling out 8 different types of PURL-driven campaigns. However, it ignores the results that can be gained by making the microsite, not the mailer the primary response vehicle.
Those of you that frequent our blog know that we advocate polished, but clean mailers–usually dimensional–with only one call to action: go to your personalized microsite. The campaign results are stagering. Twenty percent, yes 20%, or greater go from mail piece to website. Sixty-five percent (65%) remain on the site for one minute or more. Of those that visit the site roughly 10% respond to a call-to-action. Not too shabby.
Download: 8 DM Projects Where p-URLs Fit
After you’ve run a few direct mail campaigns you start to realize what works and what doesn’t. What doesn’t:
Am I missing something?
Stay tuned. Monday we’ll spill the beans on how to build a great direct mail campaign. Let’s start the week off on the right foot.
They say 80% of statistics are made up. However, that number might be off by a little. The truth is direct mail has a place in the today’s marketing mix. It is tangible.
Email is cheap. Websites are navigable. Direct mail is weighted. It stays on the coffee table for a couple of days, or in your cube. If it’s interesting it might stay longer.
An Internet-based marketing program driving people to buy is a thing of beauty, but we shouldn’t overlook the power of influence in buy-decision making processes. We also shouldn’t look past direct mail.
[VLG run direct marketing programs that use dimensional, personalized direct mail and personalized URLs to influence our customers prospects, customers and internal audiences--full disclosure.]
Think revenue in upper right corner, lost revenue bottom left, boredom bottom right, and apathy top left.
These days everyone has a formula for marketing success and no two are exactly alike. We either adapt our clients to our direct marketing approach, or adapt strategy to the goals set forth by the client. Giving clients solid advice along backed by previous campaign metrics creates an healthy partnership and solid dialog marketing campaigns. It takes a delicate touch to offer advice without talking down to clients. Many agencies fail here. You should hear our clients relay stories of agency egos the size of conference rooms.
Revenue generation is a team sport. Marketing starts with solid prospect or customer lists.* High mail-to-web rates drive these same prospects and customers into the marketing funnel.** Sticky microsites educate these folks and prime them for discussions with sales. Sales cycles grow shorter as sales gets into deeper and deeper conversations. Decision makers and those that influence the purchase get involved. Revenue is won. It all started with established campaign expectations and a solid customer-vendor relationship.
Not all clients buy into our approach 100%, but together we find ways to leverage our creative work to meet organizational milestones and goals. At the end of the day it’s about communicating expectations, setting goals before the first brainstorming session, and executing against those goals. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
*Marketers spend far too little time cleaning lists. Traditional direct mail took a shotgun approach. You could afford bogus data, because the per unit costs were somehow justified. Not so with dimensional mail. Higher-end mail pieces help keep lists smaller with better, targeted contacts.
**Once you have a solid list it’s up to us (VLG or whatever agency you use) to deliver a value proposition to those future/current customers. Look for mail-to-web (or visit rates) over 20%. Our Dialog Marketing gives you a leg up with real-time behavior tracking online and notifications via email, SMS, or RSS feed.
Scratching your head to figure out how to measure social media’s revenue impact? You’re not alone. High-level stats may look like this:
Twitter: Following 46/Followers 153
Facebook Group: Fans 80**
LinkedIn Group: Members 68
SMS Subscribers: 24
Newsletter Subscribers: 623
What do they really mean? Our numbers (above) compare favorable to others our size, I think. Actually, I don’t really know what the competition is doing, or if that’s the right measuring stick for our efforts. We don’t approach this in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses way. Our measure so far is on quality. People that follow us, are fans, are members or subscribers appear to be really, really smart.
As a small organization we can follow a prospect through our social media pipeline through to sale, but we have a harder time quantifying the sunk costs of getting them there. We can only imagine the complexity of a larger organization’s social media efforts. It seems obvious to us that social media is about small, highly interactive groups. So maybe corporate marketing shouldn’t only the social media face of the company. Maybe it’s the local franchisee, the product manager, or the field marketer. I don’t think anyone has all the answers yet. If you come across someone that does, be suspicious, very suspicious.
We’ve taken a goal-based approach that walks the line between strategy and necessity. Much of our social media experience/experiment seeks to prove out different strategies before we suggest solutions to our clients. We practice what we preach. We also need to be in the space out of necessity. Each day social media encroaches on marketing budgets and spend, taking time and attention away from quantifiable marketing efforts.
You can do both and should. Pull together a strategy that closes the loop from direct outbound to social media inbound to quantifiable results. Pull together small teams and micro-campaigns to leverage social media, because the life-cycle of a advertising campaign is shrinking.
(We’ll take a closer look at the public’s attention span next week after the holiday, because people have shorter attention spans going into a three-day holiday.)
**Finally, we need 20 more fans to reach a 100 in Facebook. Why is this important? It takes one hundred fans to earn your way into a vanity URL for your group. Vanity URLs, custom tabs and fb applications are another reason we should be excitedly cautious about the evolved Internet today. Thanks for that little bit of advice @alexrudloff.
The chorus line seems committed to using social media to do something, push out news, provide consumer alerts, deliver content to loyal customers, fish for new business, establish a thought leadership role in your industry—all that. It’s a great social experiment and shakes the foundation of an industry wedded to tradition, high margins and the intrinsic value of creative.
Nobody should draw any conclusions yet about social media’s impact on the bottom line. It’s too soon to tell. So, we’re going to table social media and focus on something old and familiar.
You might not be talking about traditional media during budget talks, but you should be.
Traditional media, direct mail, radio, outdoor, t.v., etc, should evolve as the industry evolves. Attention should be paid to teaching these old dogs new tricks.
I recently moved into a new home and I’m new to the neighborhood. Lucky for me local retailers were quick to realize I’d made the move and were kind enough to send me loads of junk mail for this service or that. Those went straight to the recycling bin. The only company that didn’t hit me with any “new” neighbor offers was Lowe’s. I guess they figured I didn’t need an incentive to visit their store. They were right.
While driving in the car last week a local radio station listed the top 10 most memorable radio jingles in the local market. I knew six of them by heart, but there is no way I’d consider buying a car based on a jingle. I’m not even sure a jingle would get me to the dealership. I pass 10 of them on my way home, so why not start my car buying experience at one of those?
Next to newspapers, television as a vehicle to deliver advertising is taking a beating in the press. Numbers are off and with good reason. I get a kick out of ads, but in this economy I’m brand neutral and buy on price. When I see a cartoon bear using toilet paper in the woods, I think, “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Yes, yes it does.
Outdoor is prevalent here in Texas, more so than in other parts of the world. It’s fascinating to see what and how outdoor is used to promote events, products, service and the like. My favorite are the signs that have an 800 number in 12 point font. What were they thinking? I’m already sending and text and talking on the phone. How in the world am I going to pull out a pin and write down the number.
Most traditional media fails to hit its mark. Media buyers and sellers will obviously disagree, but it’s true. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Direct mail needs to be relevant, personal and drive the recipient into a call to action. We happen to recommend the web be the destination. Television needs to go shorter or longer. Give me a 10 or 15 second spot, or a 2 minute short. Either hit me over the head or tell me a story, but don’t have two birds talk to me for 30 seconds. Radio could be in trouble. Any ideas on how to help them? Finally, outdoor. Just put a unique URL up there, like www.GetBackToHere.com. To where? I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Or, you could just use plastic cows that can write, they just can’t write well.
We don’t have all the answers. Heck, we may only have a few. That’s the point. In the euphoria of social media, let’s not forget that traditional media can deliver value. We just need to reinvent how and what we deliver.
BtoB, the magazine for marketing strategists, just updated their “2009 Marketing Priorities and Plans” to reflect some mid-year trends. You can download the report here.
Our own straw poll came to the same albiet unscientific conclusion. Marketing spend in the second half of 2009 will be up. Online marketing spend will go up. Direct marketing spend will go up.
We’re feeling pretty good about the direction we’ve taken as an interactive marketing firm. Three years ago we decided to focus our efforts on what we saw as two converging trends in B2B marketing–an increase in online and direct marketing spend. Hey, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
In her BtoB article, Ms Maddox asked Jim Prothe of Model Metrics to comment on this trend.
“We really didn’t face any significant budget cuts this year, but there is much more scrutiny placed on what we’re spending on and what we’re getting for it,” Mr Prothe said.
Mr Prothe’s right on the money.
Marketers need to deliver results in the downturn, but shouldn’t that be true regardless of economic climate. Number of leads, cost per opportunity, cost per lead, cost per target, impression, click-through, touch and on and on are all the product of a down economy and we hope they stay.
Last year our customers went to trade shows. This year they are hosting virtual events. Last year they sent team members to thought-leadership conferences. This year they fired those same people.
The moral of the story is make metrics your new best friend. Marketing will no longer be a safe haven for Liberal Arts majors, but a stat-heavy job that will justify its existence at the end of every program and every quarter. Turn your marketing department into a revenue center, because if you remain a cost center you’ll never get the budget you need to justify your existence. No amount of money fed to a cost center will get credit for generating revenue.
Start with highly targeted direct marketing campaigns that drive web traffic and demand directly to the sales team. Put the onus on sales to close when you set them up.