Better response for marketing campaigns!

Imagine if the guy in the picture is knocking on your front door or is walking into your office with a briefcase. More than certain, your reaction would be, “annoying salesman is trying to sale me something I don’t need.” Half way through his pitch, you would probably tell him you are not interested and show him the door. You don’t even know what he was selling, but without a doubt, you know you were in no way interested in what he has to sell. As it turns out, he was just trying to hand out vouchers for free drinks at the grand opening of a bar he owns down the street.

He did not have the slightest ounce of intent to sell you anything, but you immediately assumed he did because his appearance resembles the copier or carpet cleaning service salesman that comes by every other week. So the story ends with a “lose-lose” situation. You missed out on some free drinks (you would probably appreciate after a long day of work) and the owner was denied the opportunity to inform you about the grand opening of his bar. The moral here is no one likes being sold to.

Everyone’s definition of marketing slightly differs, but I assume we can agree that marketing is not sales. The purpose of marketing is to inform and educate the market about a product/service and its benefits. The purpose of sales is to convince someone to pay for or use the product/service.

Now think about the messaging of your marketing initiatives. Does it appear to be informative and educational or does it sound like a sales pitch? For example, if you are doing an eblast (email campaign), compare your message to the emails in your spam or trash bin. Those emails ended up in the spam or trash bin because you saw no difference between them and the copier salesman who occasionally stops by your office. If you sort though them closely, you might find some appealing offers or useful information you can benefit from.

Think about the words and phrases used in the description of the offer or the product…

“Our product is the best and is unbeatable in price. Contact us today to get your hands on one.”

“Cost efficiency is essential to the operation of a business. XYZ modules have been extensively tested by the Kellog and Harvard Business Research Scholars. Their results yield a success rate of 98.71% at enhancing cost efficiency. Learn more…”

How the wording is composed determines how the messaging is read. It is obvious the first example sounds like an email you would delete before reading the entire offer. The second offer may or may not sound like something you are interested in, but you will at least read more before moving it to the trash bin. The moment people sense the slightest hint they are being sold to, they are reluctant to absorb any additional information.

The lesson here is to not dress your marketing messaging in the apparel of a sales pitch. It may not have been your intention to compose a sales pitch, but consumers today are more sensitive than ever before. If the objective was to share a whitepaper or to invite someone to a webinar, make sure it sounds genuine and avoid trying to get someone to buy something. Just think, if the bar owner had came into your office with an Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat, you would have probably listened to what he had to say and gotten a couple of free drinks.

Willv

“A cowboy rode into town on friday and left 3 days later on friday. How did he do it?”

I assure you the quiz question is relevant and it all has to do with the channel. It’s the same in marketing!

Elizabeth Gooding, the Digital Nirvana, recently discussed personalized URLs and how it should be used in conjunction with email and direct mail.

We’ve been touting the same message almost all year but we’re finding that the channels you use to reach your customers and how you put them together are becoming more important this year. Especially when more than ever, marketers need to show results and find a way to get the same response at less cost.

In her article, Elizabeth quotes a statistic provided by podi.org which indicates that

“Relevant campaigns generate, on average, 300% better response than those that are simply personalized”

Now imagine what that boost in response will be if it is personalized, relevant and continuous.

You may have a great campaign idea for a direct mail piece, complemented by a purl, but it is not enough until you have a plan for a multi-touch campaign. This means involving everything from email, purl, direct mail, reminder emails, sales calls, maybe even SMS that continues the two-way conversation between your brand and your customers.

Yes it may look more expensive adopting this multi-channel process, but remember when you have a way to track response down to the individual, you will be able to make sure you spend 80% of your budget on the 20% of customers that give you the most business!

For more on the multi-channel process. View this video about “Climbing the Multi-Channel Mountain (without falling off!)” to see how you can get started!

By the way, the horse’s name was ‘friday’.

Seth Godin recently published a blog post about sunk costs. Read the post here.

Yes, in business school, they teach you that making the right decisions often means ignoring sunk costs and measuring what the cost/benefits are in the future.

There is some truth to that, but boy is it hard to ignore sunk costs! I would even say it is against human behavior to do so! Too often we dwell on decisions we make in the past and its inertia affects our decisions in the future.

For some professions, like venture capitalists, you never ignore sunk costs, for others, like printers, it is hard to do so. Using Seth Godin’s Analogy, the $10,000 property (Digital Press) could bring in more business for you than the $1,000,000 (Offset Press) one. Which should you invest in?

For commercial printers, this dilemma and difficulty to fight human instinct and even ‘perceived business acumen’ has never been more urgent. Very quickly the industry is moving away from print, online news compete with printed newspapers, business reports get distributed in PDF, email competes with direct mail, the ‘green movement’ means less projects (and business) for printers.

For printers, these changes mean

• replacing offset press with digital
• providing more services that complement print
• working with outside vendors to provide a more complete solution
• changing your entire business model entirelyand transforming to a ‘Marketing Service Provider’

It definitely is a tough decision to ignore previous investments, but perhaps the key here is to not stay ‘stationary‘.

Related posts:

•  Junk Mail Aren’t Us
• Don’t Let The Splash Wipe You Out
• Variable Data Publishing In The Future
• Printers Diversify Out Of Trouble

What motivates you to respond?

I believe, as a marketer, ultimately my job is to motivate people… motivate people to pay attention to our brand, motivate people to find out more about our product, motivate people to buy our product, motivate people to continue using our product, and the list goes on…

As a consumer, we only respond to marketing messages when we are motivated to do so. It can be a need, a want, an incentive, a negative reaction etc… The point is we only responded because there was a motivating factor in the message that caused us to take action. However, as marketers, we don’t always understand this concept. What makes you think the subject line on the eblast you just sent out will motivate someone to open the email? What makes you think someone is willing to follow your company’s Tweets? What makes you think someone will read the direct mail piece you just sent them?

It is obvious that as marketers,we don’t always ask ourselves these questions. If we did…. there would never be anything in our spam box, we will always be excited to receive junk mail (we wouldn’t even see it as junk mail), and “commercial free” programs wouldn’t be of any value to us.

The problem is most marketing messages lack a motivating factor. So before your next initiative, do yourself a favor and ask yourself if you would be motivated to respond to the what you are about to send out. You might save some time, effort and money by doing so.

Will V.

 We don’t do junk mail.  Junk mail is what happens when marketers don’t use Fuse.

 SNL Clip on Junk Mail

Smart campaigns eliminate the need for ‘junk mail’ to get people’s attention.  They use multiple means of connecting on relevant points for prospects that have an interest in them.  80% of new customers initiate the sales cycle these days… they will TELL YOU what they are interested in, so use it.

Smart campaigns on Fuse give the marketer the chance to get their off-line customers online, or at least identify very quickly which prospects want or need to be sent physical mail.

A targeted, relevant campaign if done well is something that the recipient is expecting, finds value in and will respond to and a very high percentage of those customers will continue the dialog with a marketer via online means.

If you don’t know why you’re sending someone something in print, don’t.  Find out more, or wait for them to ask or find another way.

 We build campaigns that take the junk out of your mail communications and give you the tools to really engage with your customers without wasting a bunch of paper and postage.

Jon Oakes

Aren’t you tired of struggling with poor campaign response rates? Can’t find that pot of gold?

If you’re getting poor results and ROI, not getting value for your marketing dollars (even if it is just the cost of emails) and are feeling bummed about your marketing ideas chances are you’re not alone.

Arguably, marketing has never been as challenged as it is during this economic period. With marketing budgets often the first to be cut, your prospects and customers even more determined not to respond and spending at an all time low. You need to make your marketing stand out! With this post, I want to help you do that and lift the lid on some of the secrets to doing better.

1) Implementation matters

Your marketing ideas are not bad. Likely it is the implementation of the idea that is lacking. Marketers need to warm up to the fact that a campaign is not just a single email/ direct mail message. Instead, it is putting together a message across multiple channels with multiple touches across time with different messaging across your central theme.

Your ideas are like the central theme for a movie. What you need to do is put together around it the CGI, talent, script to complete the cinematic experience.

2) Brand matters

If you work for an already established brand, then in general, you are privy to higher response rates. But if most of your campaign recipients do not really know you. Then you need to stand out with your campaigns. Yes, the message and offer does matter but just as important is how you present it. Do it in a way that adds humour, pulls the heart strings, makes economic sense or just entertains and your recipients will remember you for it.

3) Relevance matters

I said once, sending a direct mail/ email personalized to an individual but getting their name wrong is bad. But just as bad is sending a message that is not relevant to the individual. Make sure you are targeting each customer segment with appropriate messages and if a large number of people unsubscribe from your message from a particular segment, refine your message and keep it relevant!

4) Design Matters

Will V is the expert on this. If you’re like me and think well, if the message is right, the offer is right, the implementation is well-planned then that’s enough to make a successful campaign. You’re missing the key to the treasure chest. You’re missing the design!

As Wrich frequently points out to me. We’re first visual people. And if you’re getting high email open rates but poor response,  maybe this is your achilles heel.

As I was taking out the trash this past weekend, I realized how much marketing $$$ was being thrown away. I decided to pull out all the direct mail pieces from the trash bag and sort through them. Every piece was composed of different offers, content and images. After a brief examination, I realized a great deal of money, time and effort must have been required to generate and deliver these pieces.

The common reaction to direct mail is, “oh, more junk mail” and in the trash it goes. We would never consider the amount of resources that had gone into generating the piece and it would most likely go straight from the mail box to the trash bin. As marketers, we should all take a step back and ask why are we spending so much time and money creating something that just ends up in the trash without serving its purpose? We might as well just toss the actual marketing dollars in the trash.

Direct mail is not able to generate higher response rates and ROI because of two major reasons: they are typical and they lack relevance. They are typical, meaning they look just like the 50 gazillion other pieces of direct mail that are sent out each day. A two sided postcard with some text and a couple of images or a letter that looks like a legal notice of some kind. Who wants to read through tens if not hundreds of these pieces each month?

This was a piece used by the Seattle Art Museum to promote the Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness exhibit. If I received this in the mail, I would  likely to flip it around and read it before throwing it away. The point I am trying to make is we should always try to create a piece that no one else is creating. Part of marketing is to stand out and not be typical. Being typical will not catch any attention and is a waste of money.This may be a thought that is always in the back of our minds, but we don’t always factor it into our marketing initiatives.

A piece that stands out will only catch someone’s attention, but not necessarily motivate response. The key to motivating response is relevance. Only communicate to those who are likely to purchase your product/service. An 80 year old lady is most likely not interested in a discounted sky diving package. Personalization is an enhancement to relevance. Talk to your prospect customers as an individual and never address them as a part of a group. Just being able to print their name on the piece is no longer sufficient in creating a personalized piece. Think about the offer, images or colors that can vary depending on who is receiving the piece. Here is a good example of a piece that is both atypical and highly personalized…

Imagine receiving this in the mail. This was a piece created by Proximity London for a sensory-based direct mail campaign. The recipient’s name is printed on the chocolate and encouraged to touch, smell and taste the piece (it was created with real chocolate).

Before being engaged in your next direct mail initiative, make sure to consider if your piece stands out and who you are sending it to. Do not send out postcards because your competitors are sending out postcards. Send out something you know your competitors will not be sending out. Remember, you are not just competing with your competitors’ pieces, but with the 50 gazillion other pieces who are not even from the same industry. Take a minute and ask yourself if you would read the piece you are about to send out or would you just throw it away.

Just a thought.

Will V

In the same day last week, John A. Greco, Jr., President & CEO of The-DMA and the BtoB magazine sent news of how the direct marketing industry and direct mail industry are getting hit by the recession.

In an email to members of the DMA, John highlighted how the DMA as an organization had to restructure, do more with less resources and even cancel some of its non-signature events. Its signature events: DMA’09, DMDays, Non-profit federation conference and the email evolution conference will still run along with events with its partners.

In an independent report by Christopher Hosford, BtoB reported a $1.7 billion drop in direct mail spending last year, down from $58.4 billion in 2007. According the Winterberry group, this was its first drop in 60 years. 2008 saw drops in direct mail spending in financial services (down 16.6%), technology (down 16.6%), travel and leisure (down 4.7%).

What to do about it:

Transform your  business to adjust to the economy

How? Read Jon Oakes’ recent post: Can’t dance and it’s to wet to plough