Direct Mail Vs. E-mail Campaigns

I recently recommended that a client test a direct mail program to augment their online efforts. Sure it’s expensive, but when I looked at the company’s demographic, which didn’t exactly scream ‘tech-oriented’ or ‘I live online’, I thought it was worth a try. But it did get me thinking about the pro’s and con’s of direct vs. e-mail, so I thought I’d toss down a few thoughts.

With direct mail, you can do something eye-catching that makes you want to take a second look. With e-mail, the eye-catcher won’t be graphic, it’ll have to be the message line. (Which is not to say that you can get away with ignoring the graphic element of an e-mail marketing piece.)

With direct mail, you get to tell more of a story. Sure, this may only appeal to information-junkies like me, but sometimes more is better. With e-mail, you have to get to the point fast. This forces you to go through the process of figuring out what’s most important, a process that you shouldn’t (but might well) neglect with direct mail.

With direct mail, if it doesn’t get tossed immediately, there’s a pretty good chance that, when someone sorts through their pile-o’-mail at a later time, they’ll take a look. Also, now that the balance has shifted and most of us get a lot more e-mail marketing pitches than we do direct mail, direct mail might stand out better. With e-mail, if someone doesn’t open-me-at-the-moment, the probability that they’ll get back to it later is not much above zero.

With direct mail, you need more lead time. Not as much as you used to need to get something designed and printed, but it’s still faster to create an e-mail campaign: just don’t forget that it still needs to look good, and have a landing page that looks good, etc.

With direct mail, a campaign will cost you more - but the question remains: are there some situations where it’s more effective to use direct mail. Sure, it will cost you more, but you may end up getting what you pay for: better results.

What’s the best way to approach things?

Consider your audience: For an older demographic; a business market that’s not especially technical; or just a market that you want to let know that they’re worth the price of a stamp and a postcard (or a more expensive dimensional mailer), direct mail has to be high on the consideration list. For a younger demographic (but not so young that they don’t use e-mail anymore); or for a technical market that embraces the virtual and shuns paper, e-mail marketing is a better approach

Target well: Given the expense, you obviously want to target your direct mail really carefully. The good news: it’s cheaper and easier now to come up with finely targeted messages, even with direct mail, given printing costs and production efficiencies. But it’s not as if e-mail costs zero. You may not have to target as finely as you do with direct mail, but what’s the point of sending out 10,000 e-mail messages if only 100 of the recipients are really likely buyers.

Put some thought into the message: This may seem d’uh obvious, but I’m guessing from the number of marketing e-mails I get that there are plenty of people out there who still don’t think about what they’re saying. You need to make sure that the subject line is going to get someone to read the e-mail. (But you also need to make sure that once they do open the e-mail, there’s some payoff for them. Same goes, of course, for the direct mail piece, but I do think that - given the cost differential - people do tend to put more thought into something that gets printed. They may not always hit the mark, of course, but you can generally catch the drift of what they’re trying to get across.

Test things out: Even if you’re not doing mass direct or e-mails, it still pays to do some testing up front. Test messages, test offers, test subject lines. On the direct mail front, we are blessedly beyond the era when it was supremely costly to do small print jobs. Take advantage of this. And just because e-mail’s cheaper and more immediate, you’ll still get better results if you do some testing in advance of the big “Send”.

Why Use Promo Products?

Why should your company use promotional products like pens, caps and other customised items?
TOP EIGHT USES OF PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS

1. Promote goodwill/image
2. Reinforce marketing of existing products, services, facilities
3. Recognize employee performance
4. Generate sales leads
5. Promote trade show traffic
6. Introduce new products, services, facilities
7. Stimulate employee sales performance
8. Stimulate employee productivity

Promotional Products are being positioned more and more, not as a pure product, but as part of the promotion buyer’s promotional and communications mix. High speed information gives the audiences a choice about whether they wish to be exposed to mass advertising. Promotional Products advertising has proven to be much more effective in its unobtrusive, targeted, personalized approach.

Due to its useful nature, promotional products tend to be kept and used, leading to voluntary repeated exposure, recognition and retention of the advertiser's name and/or message. The use of promotional products is most effective when the target audience is specifically identified. Items can then be selected to appeal to that audience, creating a positive response and eliminating waste distribution.

Which products to choose when there are tens of thousands of products to choose from? This task is most easily accomplished with the help of Results Marketing!

Why Use Promotional Products?

A successful manufacturer once said that he sold 1 million quarter-inch drill bits to people who didn't want drill bits at all. What they wanted were quarter-inch holes!

Businesses bought $7 billion dollars worth of promotional products last year, but they weren't looking for promotional products.... what they wanted were results. Those promotional products were the drill bits that gave them the increased revenue, store traffic, booth traffic, motivated employees, raised funds, increased sales leads, and rewarded better customer relations.

Promotional products are the only form of advertising that your customers and prospects will thank you for. They are also, penny for penny the most cost effective and targeted marketing you can do.

Results Marketing, celebrating 20 years of getting RESULTS for our clients.

How to weather a Twitterstorm

Ad Age has posted a great article about how to stay on top of, if not ahead of poor viral marketing.

Check it out http://tinyurl.com/dllffw

Social Networking - not just for Geeks!

Social networking, it's not just for Geeks!

MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, so many examples of the power of the web to suck you into a whirling vortex of virtual reality. Each of these sites have their place and purpose. Each of these sites offer great opportunities to make new contacts, connect with old friends and stay abreast of what the public is saying about your firm, or your industry. However, it seem so easy to get carried away to the point of losing touch.

When you log into your Facebook account and spend hours looking for non-existent Easter Eggs, play virtual spy or take a test to see what kind of car you are, you may well have lost your connection to the real world. When you're at your child's baseball game and "tweeting" forces you to miss the once-in-a-lifetime home run you've lost your priorities.

I have reconnected with dozens of high school friends thanks to Facebook. I now get a daily recap of the lives of people I went 30 years without having any contact with. I actually enjoy this part. I can log in as often, or little as I choose and feel as if I know what's going on in their worlds'. There are people that I rarely see socially (maybe once a year at a holiday party) that I can now feel connected to. However, I have seen friends use this site to replace daily contact with those closest to them. Rather than picking up the phone to make plans, a broadcast "I'm going to the local hangout tonight, who's in?" has become their means of contact.

The old adage, everything in moderation has never been more apropos. Staying connected, making new connections and educating others has never been easier thanks to these venues. Just don't forget to stay firmly planted in reality on occasion.

Related topics
How to get started on social networking sites http://tinyurl.com/42axxx
Measurable ROI for social networking sites http://tinyurl.com/d3r74f

Online text ads garner more attention!

Text ads are the way to go.
Despite the buzz to the contrary, simple text ads are still the most effective way to advertise online according to a survey by iperceptions.com.

The market research company found that 25% of website visitors are more likely to click on a text-only ad when they visit a website - a preference that beat out every other format.

The study is especially intriguing given its substantial number of participants - 14,000 people were surveyed about their ad preferences after they visited leading media websites.

Banner ads, those ubiquitous rectangles that pop up next to articles and other web content proved nearly as popular in the study. A full 20% of respondents said that are likely to click on banner ads, which often feature product pictures just to the right of web content. Another 12% said they are likely to click on banner ads that run across the tope of web pages as well.