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No. 1 Priority – Win Your Customers Back
#1 Priority – Win Your Customers Back
Putting Your Customers First Has Always Been Important, But Now It Has To Be Your #1 Priority.
Marketing to your existing customers has always been important and they are your greatest asset. It’s much easier to reach existing customers through your marketing than it is to gain a new customer. COVID-19 will certainly test the loyalty of your existing customer base as it affects traditional business-to-customer relationships. Therefore, as businesses look to recover and re-open or increase the level of existing operations, re-engaging with current customers should be your #1 priority.
Unlike in the past, many customers may be hesitant to return to your place of business. They may be concerned over safety issues, be suffering financial hardships, simply don’t know if or when your business will be re-opening or providing the services they previously purchased. Now is the time to re-engage with your existing customers and let them know how you’re taking their safety concerns seriously and remind them that your business is open and ready to meet their needs.
So, how do you get the attention of your existing customers while reassuring them that you’re paying attention to their needs and concerns?
Create A Special Offer For Your Customers To Show Your Appreciation
Nothing says “we appreciate your business” more than a special offer for loyal patronage. That’s why it’s important to show your customers that you are grateful for their business by giving them an incentive to return after restrictions are lifted. Some customers may need that extra incentive to return to normal consumer behavior. Others may simply be looking for deals from businesses they’ve purchased from previously. Whatever the case, make sure you come up with a special offer to get your customers off the couch and into your business.
It’s important to keep your special offer “valuable” and a deal not to be missed. The idea is that the special offer provides enough incentive to get your customers out of the comfort and safety of their own homes and into yourbusiness. By providing something special – a discount off of a high-cost item, a buy one, get one scenario, or even free product (perhaps a discontinued or a previous model of a product). The key here is to incentivize customers with an offer that is something exciting and is perceived as high-value.
Depending on your business, and whether you closed during the initial COVID-19 quarantine, or simply scaled back your operations, you may want to choose your offer carefully. For instance, if you sell “non-essential” items that consumers have been reluctant to purchase during the pandemic, use a more aggressive offer to ensure that customers will take advantage of it.
Consider using a phrase that is specific to your situation to appeal to your customers. For example, if you have been closed since the beginning of the coronavirus restrictions, you might want to use something like “We’re Back! Come back this week and get 20% off your purchase!” Some other phrases that you could consider using (based on your situation) are:
“Win Back” Phrases To Use
- We missed you! Come back today!
- It’s not the same without you…
- We’re ready when you are
- We’re open! Come stop by
- Save [promotion details] when you come back to us!
- Hey, [first name], We’re open again!
- We’ve changed to safely serve you
Once you’ve created the special offer with an appropriate phrase to get your customer’s attention, you’ll need to deliver it to your customers. Direct mail still yields the greatest response rate. Combine your direct mailer with Spectrum Mail Plus, our omni-channel marketing program, and you can reach your entire customer base in their homes with that special offer, both in their mailbox and online.
Hold A Special Customer Preview Day Before The Main Sales Event Starts
Everyone loves the thought of being first to preview a new product or being the first to try out a new service. Consider holding a special customer preview day where you invite only your customers to come and preview a big sale (a big reopening sale, perhaps) before the general public.
What is the benefit of doing this? First, it gets your customers – the folks who have bought from you before – in your establishment. If they’ve bought from you before, chances are, they will again. Second, those consumers that were previous customers are likely to spread the word or even bring a potential customer with them to your “preview”, thereby increasing your exposure beyond your list.
Last, holding a preview before the main sale begins can give you insight into what the response will be to your direct mail marketing campaign. Knowing which offers were redeemed will help you prepare your inventory appropriately. Do you have enough product on hand for your most popular sale items?
Your customers are likely to be honest with you and will give you candid and pertinent feedback that might help your main sale be more successful. Make sure you solicit their feedback when they attend your preview event because you may learn some invaluable insight.
Use Promotional Periods Longer Than What You May Have In The Past
Doing business post-COVID-19 is most definitely going to be different and you’ll need to adapt to the new “normal”. Previously, you’ve probably held weekend or 2-day sales to get people to come in during a specific promotional period. After restrictions are loosened from the coronavirus, you may have to lengthen your promotional period to accommodate for fewer consumers in your business at a time and to give your customers more time to respond to your sale.
It is important to take into consideration the restrictions that your state and community have imposed on businesses in the process of reopening. Some restrictions call for a staggered reopening with different businesses and industries opening days apart with specific instructions as to how many customers can be in the store at a time, how far apart tables need to be for dining, etc. Know what those restrictions are and consider them when planning the length of your sale to enable all of your customers to visit your store during the promotional period.
Extend Your Event’s Draw With Spectrum Mail Plus
As mentioned previously, using our omni-channel direct marketing program, Spectrum Mail Plus, to increase your business’s message frequency and reach is highly recommended. Your customers are currently searching for products and services from the comfort of their home. If you use traditional marketing methods like direct mail, combining that with social media and online ads, you can increase your response rate 23-46%. What better way to entice your customers to get off the couch and visit your business!
Response rates for direct mail are already better than all other mediums combined at 5.1%. Combining that with digital ads on social networks like Facebook and Instagram increases the likelihood that your customers will see your ads multiple times before setting foot in your establishment. That repetition is critical to generating response!
Omni-channel marketing has already proven to be the best approach to direct marketing with Spectrum Mail Plus having consistently demonstrated the ability of the method to significantly impact performance. Try Spectrum Mail Plus with your next direct mail marketing campaign and experience the difference in response to your marketing!
Let Spectrum help you make sure your greatest asset, your customers, will come back ready to buy and continue to return.
Marketing Planning for Your Big Comeback During Covid-19
Marketing Planning for Your Big Comeback During Covid-19
Time to Start Putting Together Your Business’s Plan for Your “Grand Re-Opening Event”
Could you reopen much earlier than expected? While we all recognize that the timing of businesses reopening during the coronavirus pandemic will be based on a variety of factors, most believe that it will start to happen earlier than anticipated. So without a crystal ball on the exact date for your; industry, state or local market, our first recommendation is, “be prepared”.
If you’ve closed temporarily or reduced your staff and hours significantly, you’re probably already trying to figure out when you can return to normal business operations. But how do you know when you’ll be allowed to reopen and more importantly, how will you go about your business’s “big comeback”?
You’ve probably scaled back your advertising efforts, which is understandable, however, you shouldn’t have stopped marketing completely. Why? There are a variety of reasons to not stop direct marketing, the biggest of them being that consumers are spending even more time at home online surfing, on social media and checking their mailboxes – it’s the perfect time to market to them and let them know that your business is still serving your customers. With more decision makers at home, reaching out with a direct mail campaign can deliver more impressions and generate higher response.
To position your business effectively for when the time is right, we’ve developed the following planning guide. We can help you address these critical steps:
Top 3 Planning Priorities
- Pull your existing customer list
- Get your messaging right
- Prepare your marketing materials
Pull Your Existing Customer List
While your business may have slowed and there’s a few calm moments, take some time and review your existing customer list. Inevitably, there’s some list work that can be done to help ensure that you’re using the most up-to-date data on your existing customers. When restrictions lift and business resumes, they’ll be the ones coming through your doors first and those you should reach out to first when your business reopens. So, clean, update and get an understanding of list counts for one-to-one marketing outreach so that you can hit the ground running.
Get Your Messaging Right
Next, consider this: a lot has changed in our country, states and local communities in the last few months and it’s affected how business is operated. As a business owner, you’ll need to take this into consideration when you’re communicating your message – what are you customers’ needs? What are their concerns relative to social distancing? How will you deliver your product and/or service to meet their expectations of safety?
You’ll need to address topics like, safety, trust, operating adjustments, product/service offerings and more in your messaging. You’ll need to assure them that you’re practicing the best safety methods and that you’re putting their needs and concerns first.
For instance, by continuing to include a curbside pick-up or delivery option to address concerns about shopping or being amongst large groups of people is a great way to instill confidence and loyalty for customers as they begin to resume normal shopping behavior.
Have you lost market share since COVID-19 began? It’s possible you may have to re-establish your position in the market. What may have been an easy sell before may be more challenging now with consumer spending having decreased. You may be in the unique position to GAIN market share if you are quick to adjust your business or you offer products and services that withstand the current challenges. If that’s the case, your marketing efforts could pay dividends as business returns.
Prepare Your Marketing Materials
Once you’ve cleaned your customer lists and have determined what messaging you’ll use for marketing, it’s time to identify an appropriate theme, format and design for any direct mail campaign and have it designed and ready to go so that you can either start marketing or react quickly to changes.
You’ll need to determine what formats and designs will have the most impact on consumers. Ensure your direction provides enough physical space to effectively reflect; your products and services, safety measures being taken to build trust, present strong offers and stand out in the mailbox.
We also recommend using a combination of traditional direct mail and coordinated digital marketing targeted to the same recipients to reintroduce your business. Combine direct mail and digital with Spectrum Mail Plus?
With Spectrum Mail Plus, you can reach your customers in their mailboxes and online, through both Facebook and Instagram (where they are spending the majority of their time these days). The digital ads will reach them before, during and after they receive your mail campaign. Because many consumers and their families are housebound, the digital aspect of Spectrum Mail Plus has helped lift the response of traditional direct mail campaigns substantially. Typically, we see a 23-46% increase in overall response.
Planning Is Key To Your Marketing Success
As with any campaign, planning is key. Just as much thought should be put into how you’ll deploy your post-COVID-19 campaign as the campaign itself so that you can optimize its impact.
Once businesses begin to reopen and our communities returning to a “new normal”, you’ll need to be prepared for increased consumer demand. Many businesses have suffered from quarantines and lockdowns both government and self-imposed and as a result, production has decreased for many businesses as they cut back due to declining revenue. The key is to not cut back so far that bouncing back is impossible. Judging by the effects of COVID-19 from China and Europe, business recovery post-COVID-19 is coming along at a rate much higher than predicted.
This said, it’s important that businesses prepare for the increased demand once economic recovery has begun and businesses begin to bounce back. The future is still uncertain, however, it is essential to prepare rather than be caught short.
Spectrum Can Help
The important thing to remember is that we’re all in this together. When you’re ready to talk about marketing planning for your big post-Coronavirus comeback, let us know. Spectrum is here to help.
The Power of Social Match
The Power of Social Match
We take your direct mailing list and MATCH leads with their Facebook and Instagram user accounts. Resulting in increased conversion rates.
Match your mailing list with your Facebook and Instagram user accounts. Your target market will not only receive the mailing, but will be delivered the SAME message on their social feeds, even before they visit your client’s website online. This means a higher conversion rate for your campaign! SocialMatch is a component of Spectrum Mail Plus, and omni-channel direct marketing solution. Learn more >
Social Match Allows You To
- Maximize the use of your mailing list.
- Help the people from your list familiarize themselves with your brand before the mail hits.
- Generate thousands of additional social impressions when you show your audience online ads, even without the need of them visiting your site first!
80% of sales are made between the 8th and 12th contact. Social Match allows you to reach interested prospects at yet another activation point.
What is Omni-Channel Marketing?
What is Omni-Channel Marketing?
Omni-Channel marketing, simply stated, is a marketing method that uses multiple marketing channels to communicate a customer-focused integrated marketing experience with coordinated messaging across multiple marketing channels.
The goal is to connect with the consumer, whether they receive a direct mailer, are online, or visit a brick and mortar retail store location with a consistent message or promotion. Everything should compliment each other.
However, it goes even deeper – to your products and services, your staff, and how you present your business to the market. A true omni-channel marketing campaign has the consumer’s entire experience in consideration, delivering a cohesive journey from initial search to post-purchase.
An example of a omni-channel campaign would be launching an promotional event or a sale that features a consistent message on a direct mail piece, signage, online advertising channels and even other media. You would then staff your event appropriately to prepare for the influx of additional traffic and train them appropriately. You’ll want to ensure everyone in the organization that deals with the customer’s buying journey is on the same page. That’s omni-channel marketing.
Getting started with omni-channel marketing
How do customers find your products and services? Do you they purchase online or go to your store? If they purchase online, do they purchase on mobile or desktop? These are just some of the factors to be considered when putting together an omni-channel marketing campaign. Organization-wide, everyone should be on the same page regarding the consumer’s buying experience. An omni-channel marketing experience comes by putting the consumer first and examining the entire journey of the customer.
However, the key to successful omni-channel marketing is using good data and understanding your custom audience- their wants, their needs and how they want to do business. The deeper you can understand your customer and prospects, the more likely they are to interact with your brand. Collecting data about your customers is only one small part of omni-channel marketing – you must also analyze the data and use it to connect with your customers in a meaningful and effective way. Using the data you’ve collected, you can reach them across multiple devices and platforms with a cohesive message that they will almost certain respond to.
Additionally, as omni-channel marketing uses multiple marketing channels, you’ll want to make sure that all of them are integrated and that the customer experience is seamless when the user switches devices or platforms. According to Instapage, 90% of multiple device owners switch between an average of three per day to complete a task. Consistency in the messaging improves awareness and engagement. Landing pages and websites must be responsive and load quickly to accommodate the growing mobile device trend, especially when users leave their desktop.
What’s the difference between omni-channel marketing and multi-channel marketing?
Multi-channel marketing is the ability to market toward consumers through multiple marketing channels: printed media, digital and social media, word-of-mouth and more. The biggest difference between the multi-channel and omni-channel is that omni-channel marketing provides a seamless, integrated experience throughout multiple channels while multi-channel marketing distributes to as many channels as possible, usually with a message specific to that marketing channel.
Multi-channel marketing, which most businesses currently use, is not as effective as omni-channel marketing, largely due to the fact that the customer isn’t the focus, the channel is. With consumers spanning multiple devices when making purchases these days, it pays to be customer focused with an integrated shopping experience.
Finally, it takes more effort and is more time consuming to manage multi-channel marketing as opposed to omni-channel marketing. Why? Think about it – with multi-channel marketing, you’re actually managing the campaigns on all the different channels your business utilizes – print, web, social, brick-and-mortar – that’s a lot. With omni-channel, you’re managing one campaign over the different channels your business uses, ultimately occupying less of your time and communicating a unified message.
How can an omni-channel marketing strategy benefit your business?
The answer is increased campaign control, personalization, impressions, and ROI!
It’s actually pretty clear – omni-channel marketing offers a more personalized marketing experience for your customers with less effort, less waste and more ROI. This is particularly powerful when launching a time-sensitive promotion, sale, or weekend event. You’re able to boost the marketing effort while specifically targeting your audience across multiple channels without interfering with your typical marketing programs.
If you’re currently using a multi-channel approach, however, don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. In fact, utilizing all of your marketing channels is better than shorting yourself and your business by only using some of them. It takes an average of seven touches before a consumer will make a purchase or try a new product. Hitting them with the same marketing message, multiple times can only increase the likelihood that that consumer will purchase your product or service.
So now you know that there’s a better, smarter way to market across all of your marketing channels and it all begins with a deep understanding of your customers.
Looking for an effective omni-channel marketing program?
Boost your next marketing campaign or promotion with Spectrum Mail Plus!
Spectrum now offers Spectrum Mail Plus – an omni-channel marketing program that combines direct mail, the USPS service Informed Delivery, online follow-up through the Google Display Network, social media follow-up and SocialMatch – a social media marketing service that matches physical addresses to Facebook and Instagram accounts. Additionally, Spectrum Mail Plus can tell you who visited your website from your mailing as well as visitors who were not on your mailing list and add them to a “lead” list. Spectrum Mail Plus is the only name you need know to when it comes to omni-channel marketing. Contact us today to start your first campaign and enjoy 23-46% increase RESULTS!
What is Direct Mail?
What is Direct Mail?
Direct Mail is a piece of tangible advertising that is sent to a customer or prospects physical mailing address.
Direct mail is a specific type of direct response marketing that is designed to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to take a specific action. Direct Mail is also the typical starting point to an omni-channel direct marketing campaign.
There are a lot of components to a direct mail marketing campaign including mailing list selection, choosing an enticing offer, researching your specific audience, creative graphic design, mailing services, data collection and analytics. Let’s go through what a typical direct mail program looks like and we’ll touch on the most important aspects of them.
What Makes Direct Mail Effective?
Now that we’ve defined what direct mail is, another important question we need to ask is, what makes direct mail effective? Direct mail by itself has a higher yield than other marketing strategies for a number of reasons.
Two of those reasons include the psychological reaction we have to holding a physical mail piece as opposed to seeing a digital advertisement and over saturation when it comes to email marketing.
The first two things we need to do is figure out who the audience is we’re mailing to and start designing a captivating mail piece.
Who is Your Target Audience?
Finding your audience can be a challenge just by itself. Spend some time thinking about your overall strategy and the demographics of your campaign because it is directly related to building your physical mailing list and creating your direct mail piece.
- Who is your audience?
- Where are they geographically?
- How do you reach them?
- How far is your customer willing to travel for your products or services?
- Metaphorically, what does your customer look like?
Spectrum can help you with your mailing list and give you several options on how to mail. The best way we found to increase your ROI is by using a targeted list.
Your audience is a group of people whose interests are aligned with what you’re selling. If you sell dog toys and other pet accessories your audience’s interests will include pets. If you sell furniture it’s likely that your audience will be among those who just moved into a new house. The finer you can target your customer the better off you’ll be in the long run when it comes to shipping and direct mail piece costs.
There are a number of ways to reach your customers. From highly targeted and personalized direct mail pieces sent directly to your customers’ doors to standing in the middle of a busy city square and screaming your offer at people who pass by. While both are great options, there’s a chance the former will yield much better results for your marketing spend and overall reputation as a company. Direct mail is currently the leading marketing vehicle with a 9% response rate compared to a 1% response rate to email and other digital forms of advertising. That being said, digital marketing has a large part to play in a fully-fledged marketing campaign.
Deciding on where you’re going to mail to geographically can be tricky. You might pick up and extra 5,000 mailing addresses by expanding your reach, but, if you expand into an area that’s an hour and a half away from your location, it’s likely those people will travel to a competitor closer to them if you’re purely brick-and-mortar. The more precise you are when building your ideal customer profile the better you can tailor your marketing message to them as well. The easiest demographic to target for is zip code or geographic location. Decide on how far away you’d like to target based on the amount of time it takes to travel to your location from each direction. If you know that a potential customer will travel 30 minutes to visit your location then start there and continue to add values to your demographics to narrow it down. You can add things like age, income, interests, homeowner or renter, etc. You should quickly find out how many of your new customers are available to mail to and adjust your campaign accordingly.
Spectrum has years of experience in list building and demographics and utilizes the latest data available. Let us work alongside you to build your perfect mailing list.
According to the 40/40/20 rule, 40% of a successful direct mail campaign is determined by the quality of your mailing list. By planning your mailing using a targeted list with carefully selected demographics you can effectively increase your ROI. When you only send your marketing message to the people that will benefit the most, you cut out unnecessary spending on direct mail pieces that are going to the wrong homes or businesses. Consider this. You own a small business selling pool supplies and novelty items for homeowners with pools. The last thing you want to do is send extra direct mail pieces to people in apartments with no pools.
The more specific you are when identifying your ideal customer the more successful your message will be. Spectrum also does something that sets us apart from other marketing agencies.
Designing a Winning Direct Mail Piece
We design your direct mail piece at the same time we are determining your ideal customer and building your physical mailing list. Keep reading to find out why we do this.
It may seem like a small number compared to the other 80% of your direct mail campaign, but, your design (20%) is just as important. There’s no one answer to how your piece should look, but, there are very clear fundamentals to design that if ignored can hurt your campaign. Working with a company that has an award-winning team of designers experienced in your industry helps to make this process easy. There are certain elements any type of advertisement should have, especially direct mail.
- A clear and obvious call to action
- An enticing special offer, deal, and/or coupons
- A message that clearly defines the reason for the mailing
- Captivating and clear imagery
- Your branding, logo and contact information
What makes you stand out?
Your call-to-action should be clear and obvious. Whether it’s to visit your location, call your business, or bring in a coupon, your call-to-action should be the most visible element on your piece. This should be a part of the main message for the reason for the mailing. Your imagery should be hi-res at 300 dpi at the correct size to avoid pixelation and it should coincide with your business or your marketing message.
Your offers and coupons are 40% of how successful your direct mail campaign is. Make sure that the detail and attention you spend on the design of your coupons is just as much as the rest of the mail piece. Make sure that the offer is clear and concise so that the customer knows exactly what they’re getting (value) at a glance. never make your customers search for the value.
Your logo and contact information while part of your brand is slightly less important. Typically customers, when they’re not already familiar with your business, won’t care about it until you give them a reason to (offers and marketing message). Once they care about what you’re selling, let them know who you are and where they can obtain your product.
Efficiency is critical
Your direct mail piece is designed while the list building is taking place. The reason we do this is to make the process more efficient and get your piece out faster. Part of your marketing campaign’s strategy is deciding on when your customers should receive the direct mail piece. If the reason for your mailing is event-based and is time-sensitive then this is especially important. Sending it too soon or too late is decremental. Too soon and they will forget about your event. Too late and they may not have time to attend.
Where's the Value?
The value is in your offer, which, is the other 40% of the 40/40/20 rule.
- What can you give to your customers?
After researching your audience you should have an idea, based on the demographics, of what would be the most beneficial to your customers in terms of an offer. Because your offer is so important to building a strong direct mail campaign it’s important to spend as much time on this as you did your list. Your offer should also help you build your in-house list. Every customer you have that purchases from you is now a loyal customer and making sure they keep coming back is easier and cheaper than attracting new customers. Sending them a personal offer once in a while will help keep them coming back and it’s something that you can’t afford not to do in this marketing climate.
Tailor your offer
Your offer will depend on what type of business you operate and who your clientele is. If you’re a service-based business then you’ll want to run some sort of limited-time promotion that requires your customers to visit your location. Adding an end-date to your promotion less than 2 weeks creates urgency which is a good thing. There’s a fine line between too much time and no urgency to too little time for your customers to plan to use the service offer. If you run a product-based business you can include coupons on your direct mail like buy-one-get-one or 50% off or whatever makes the most sense for you. Just make sure it aligns with who your customer is.
Whether a coupon is digital or physical it gives your customer a constant reminder of your business. Even if your customer never uses your coupon it doesn’t mean they won’t purchase from you. We’ve all been in a situation where the entire point to going to a business was to use a coupon and then we forget the coupon. We still make the purchase we intended to make when we set out with the goal. The coupon served as a future goal of purchasing a service at a later date, but, it doesn’t matter if they use the coupon or not. As long as they make the purchase the intent behind serving the coupon to the customer has been met.
The last thing to consider is how you present this information to your customer. Are you selling small products to individuals with a low-income? You might want to try a paper mail piece with perforated coupons. Are you a furniture store or do you sell large ticket items to individuals or families with disposable income? Try using a direct mail piece that comes with perforated coupons and uses thicker card stock. Also, make sure the design speaks to your customer on an emotional level. We rarely tend to think with our heads, even though we like to think we do.
Pre-Sorting and Mailing
The process of sending the mail out through USPS is relatively simple. First, your mail piece is printed in our production facility where any last step personalization occurs including, inserting names and personal information into the copy of the piece, adding scratch-offs and other unique items, and adding the folds, creases, perforated lines, and die cuts. We pre-sort your mail ahead of time before it gets to USPS. We do this for a couple of reasons. The first is to greatly reduce human error from the postal office’s side and the second is to save you money. The less time USPS spends on sorting and preparation for delivery the less is costs in postage and handling. Those savings are directly passed on to you. Essentially we work in conjunction with USPS to maximize delivery opportunities and minimize postal costs.
By this time in the process your mail has been sent and now you just need to wait for customers to walk through your door. There is one more thing though before you’re finally finished with your campaign.
Pre-Sorting and Mailing
The very last thing which is arguably the most important thing is collecting data from the campaign. This can come in all shapes and sizes. This could be in the form of a barcode specific to your mail piece that’s attached to the coupons so that when they’re scanned by your stores POS the information is tracked. This could also be employees asking customers if they’re checking out today because of a mailing. If you are running a Spectrum Mail Plus Omni-Channel Campaign, you’ll have access to all your results in an online dashboard. Whichever way you can manage collecting the data, it’s essential to determine the overall effectiveness and ROI of your campaign. Without this data it’s difficult to make changes to your future mailings or run any kind of A/B testing.
Designing a Winning Direct Mail Piece
While direct mail is still the best form of marketing when it comes toresponse rates, it’s only part of a complete marketing campaign. Did you know that there’s a 26% increase in complete conversions when users who have been retargeted with online advertising return to the website? Or that the average social media user spends up to 4 hours per day on Facebook and Instagram? Target your mailing list online to boost your campaigns and increase your ROI. We can show you how.
Direct mail in essence is easy to understand, however, executing a campaign isn’t. Spectrum Marketing Companies has been delivering direct mail campaigns that get RESULTS for decades. Working with us makes everything easier when it comes to your marketing.
What is Direct Marketing?
What is Direct Marketing?
The definition of direct marketing (direct response marketing) is the business of selling products or services directly to consumers through a variety of different media rather than through a retailer on order to get a specific response. There are several methods of direct marketing: direct mail marketing, telemarketing, email marketing, online marketing and traditional door-to-door marketing, to name a few.
Almost all direct marketing campaigns are offer-driven and most include coupons or discounts off of products or services. These campaigns are sent directly to consumers, expecting a direct response from them. Typically, it takes a consumer seeing your message at least 7 times before making a purchase.
Is It A New Thing?
Direct marketing has existed since the 15th century in England and Europe when publishers would print catalogues for distribution to the general public. These catalogues spread to colonial America, which gave rise to books and other literature utilizing the same distribution format. As time went on and technology got better, more and more people began using direct marketing as a means to distribute their message. In 1928, bulk mail postage rates were first established by the Direct Mail Advertising Association. Finally, in 1967, Lester Wunderman coined the phrase “direct marketing” and is considered to be the father of contemporary direct marketing.
How Does Direct Marketing Work?
Typically, direct marketing involves a direct sales consultant or expert whose job it is to sell products or services to consumers. In some cases, there may be no sales consultant, but a business owner instead, directly selling to consumers. Ultimately, anyone can be a direct marketer if you’ve got something to sell and someone to sell it to.
Because of its nature, direct marketing effectiveness is easy to measure due to its tendency to elicit a direct response. It is extremely attractive to marketers for this reason. For example, if a direct marketer sends out 1000 solicitations and 100 people respond to the solicitation, that’s a 10% conversion.
However, rarely is it that easy to achieve such results by a single solicitation. Cross-channel marketing has been proven to lift a campaign’s results. In fact, when combined with a one or more digital advertising media, direct mail campaigns experienced more than a 118% lift in response rate since 2017.
Is Direct Mail Marketing Effective?
Yes! Direct mail marketing is still amongst the most effective forms of direct marketing available to businesses today. Direct mail marketing is tied with social media marketing at 57% as the most used medium (Source: ANA/DMA Response Rate Report 2018).
Spectrum Marketing believes that successful direct mail marketing campaigns are made up of three major components: a great offer, an accurate list and an attractive creative design, or the 40/40/20 strategy.
How To Setup A Successful Direct Mail Marketing Campaign
First, Start With A Great Offer
The first step is creating an attractive offer – how do you know what kind of offer will get the best response? Listen to your customers. Research their buying habits – what’s the most popular amongst your clientele? What kind of offer would they jump at? Having an irresistible offer that your customers can’t help but take advantage of is the first step in any marketing campaign.
Coupons are a great way to entice your customers to take advantage of your campaign – whether printed or digital, a coupon gives your customer a tangible reminder of your offer and has a higher ROI overall.
Next, Build A Quality List
Whether your marketing efforts include direct mail marketing, email marketing or digital marketing, you want to make sure that you have an accurate list that you can target your intended market.
If you’re using direct mail marketing, you’re going to want to check out this post on EDDM vs. Smart Targeting. Eliminating waste by factoring out people who you know won’t be interested in your products or service is extremely important and makes your campaign more effective.
Finally, Combine The Offer With The Creative
Once you’ve established your offer, and you’ve built an accurate, quality list, it’s time to design the piece that will help drive your offer – to communicate supporting details that will substantiate your business and your offer. The piece itself should bring everything together – your brand, your offer and your products or services – and should communicate your message clearly to your customers.
Finally, Combine The Offer With The Creative
Direct marketing is not just limited to direct mail – however, direct mail response rates rose significantly in 2018 when compared to email, paid search, online display and social media advertising. When combined with direct mail, email, online display and social media, retargeting of your audience can help lift a campaign’s RESULTS. Learn about how to leverage an omni-channel campaign with Spectrum Mail Plus – to increase RESULTS by 23-46%!
Email marketing has become widely popular as a method of direct marketing largely due to its low cost to design, test and deploy, as well as being able to accurately measure its results.
Paid search and online display marketing help reinforce your campaign’s message by targeting users searching for a particular product or service. Through Google’s Display Network, your ad can be seen on a number of sites across the internet based on that user’s search.
Social media marketing, like online display marketing, helps reinforce your campaign’s message or could serve as a stand-alone advertisement to users of various platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The advantage to these platforms is that users are more likely to interact with an ad on those sites than anywhere else on the internet.
Telemarketing used to be a more common form of direct marketing, however, with industry results varying widely, it’s becoming less reliable as a marketing method. In fact, a mere 1% of cold calls actually converts according to a study by Keller Research Center at Baylor University. However, some marketers swear by telemarketing as a foundational cornerstone of their business. To stay relevant, telemarketers have had to adapt to changing consumer behaviors.
Which Direct Marketing Method Should You Use?
In short, all of them, together. Direct marketing is constantly changing – as technology gets better, newer ways to market to consumers emerges. However, even with all of the new digital marketing methods available, traditional methods such as direct mail and telemarketing still have their place in the marketing mix.
As stated before, direct mail campaign results can be lifted by adding in online display retargeting, social media advertising, and email marketing. Digital marketing alone is difficult to reach every demographic successfully. Since it takes 7 touches before a consumer is ready to make a purchase, it’s best to take your campaign on multiple channels and reach them wherever they may be.
By using creating a great offer to entice your customers, an accurate list to reach them, and an attractive piece to bring it all together, your next campaign will be nothing but successful and yield excellent RESULTS!
Printing Impressions Ranked 78 top 400
Ranked #78 Printing Impressions Top 400
Celebrating its 35th Consecutive Year
The Printing Impressions 400 provides the industry’s most comprehensive listing of the leading printing companies in the United States and Canada ranked by annual sales volume. In 2018 Spectrum Marketing Companies was ranked #78 among the top 400 in the printing industry.
Top 7 Reasons Direct Mail Wins More Customers
Top 7 Reasons Direct Mail Wins More Customers
Going into 2018 the DMA stated the following in their Statistical Fact Book.
“For those of you who are already on the direct mail bandwagon – because you really should be in this day and age – here’s what you should know about 2018: It’s going to be irresistibly amazing!”
This prediction has certainly proven to be the case.
1) Better Response Than Other Channels
The 2018 ANA/DMA Response Rate book defined direct mail as having the best response rate among all other marketing channels. Direct mail crushes the other channels with a 9% response rate for house lists and a 5% rate for prospect lists. Combined, the other channels only manage 3.3% across both house and prospect lists.
With email and social media marketing on the rise, consumers have become exposed to hundreds of advertisements on a daily basis, some more intrusive than others. In doing so, consumers have become numb to digital media advertising and have even taken measures to remove the ads from their reach. Coincidentally, even as email continues to be the most used tool for advertising, it is hardly the most effective with a 1% response rate by prospect list (a 0.8% increase from 2017).
2) Effective Targeting
Direct mail, when implemented properly into a marketing campaign, has the ability to target very specific demographics. When you tailor your campaign to appeal to your ideal audience, you increase the potential for response by cutting out the customers who are less likely to respond to your marketing efforts.
3) More Trusted By Consumers
There’s something about a tangible piece of collateral that tells consumers that you’re trustworthy. Consumers are more likely to trust your business if you send them a physical piece of mail rather than send digital communication.
4) It’s More Persuasive
Direct mail has a similar effect over consumers in persuasion as it does trustworthiness. Sensory stimulation is a proven tactic in retail; a consumer’s likelihood to purchase is in fact correlated with the number of items they touch.
5) Direct Mail Is More Memorable
When you receive a direct mail piece, it touches more of your senses than digital marketing does. When you allow consumers to touch, see, and smell your direct mail piece, they’re more likely to remember your business. Direct mail, when saved, also serves as a constant reminder more so than digital channels.
6) Creative Options Allows For Unique Engagement
Direct mail can create a better response by engaging with consumers in a more memorable way. Use custom folds and die-cuts to create an interactive piece that is a more engaging experience for customers.
7) Able To Reach All Demographic Groups
If there’s a demographic group that is part of your ideal audience, direct mail can target it. Our team can segment your mailing list with many demographic and geographic filters including age, housing, financial interests, hobbies, geography, and more.
81%
of survey respondents plan to maintain or increase usage of direct mail in the next 12 months.
Direct Mail Response Rate Continued From Blog
*All relevant data has been pulled from this year’s 2018 Direct Marketing Association response rate report, publishing important data regarding direct mail relative to digital channels. (Source: ANA/DMA Response Rate Report 2018)
Direct Mail Has Explosive Response
Direct Mail Records the Highest Response Since Being Tracked!
Direct mail’s performance is the highest it’s been since the DMA / ANA (Data & Marketing Association / Association of National Advertisers) has been tracking it and here’s why so many marketers are finding a historic level of success.
The increased level of direct mail response in the last 3 years represents a remarkable reversal of the previous trend and underlines the fact that something truly amazing is happening in this traditional channel. Based on the DMA’s “Direct Mail Response Rates 2003-2018”, House List (customer) response rose 125% from its 2015 levels and Prospect Lists (acquisition) rose 400% for the same period.
The contributing factors to Direct Mail’s recent success:
It's More Trusted
Print-based media including publications, catalogs and promotional materials received in the mail are the MOST TRUSTED by consumers when making a purchasing decision (based on surveys conducted by MarketingSherpa*). This comes at a time when other major channels like digital are being viewed with increased skepticism due to data breaches, spam, questionable content and elevated privacy concerns.
Better Data & Lists
Companies have made it a priority to maintain their customer data to a higher standard than in previous years. They are now using this data more effectively than ever to influence the purchase behaviors of their existing customers (higher frequency of purchase / increased level of purchase) and model prospect data to more effectively find “look-alike” customers to acquire.
Better Pieces & Offers
With the implementation of improved testing methodologies, marketers are able to optimize their efforts by testing mail formats, offers and a range of other variables to achieve the best overall approach. With POS systems supporting features like scannable coupon codes and other tracking, marketers are able to use data captured by previous campaigns to improve results in the future.
84%
of Millennials take the time to look through their mail and 64% would rather scan for useful information in the mail than e-mail. In addition, this generation even believes paper mail is a more reliable and viable source of communication (USPS Mail Moments Review).
Mobile Shift
The shift to a “mobile first” mindset and consumers interacting on mobile devices at a higher rate than desktops has changed the impact various digital advertising formats have. What was previously viewed on large desktop screens is now either much smaller on a mobile device, limited in its “rich media nature” or requires drilling down further to see any of the content in the case of email.
Direct Mail Response Rate Continued From Blog
*All relevant data has been pulled from this year’s 2018 Direct Marketing Association response rate report, publishing important data regarding direct mail relative to digital channels. (Source: ANA/DMA Response Rate Report 2018)
*Reference to survey on “Which advertising channels consumers trust most and least when making purchases” (Source: Marketing Sherpa)