Direct Marketing

Channel Surfing for Influencers: Social Media

In my third of four posts about which channels work best to reach and engage influencers, I take a look at the new kid on the block: social media.

Marketers are sometimes torn between doing what has worked most effectively in the past and testing out new technologies and channels that have the potential to be real game-changers in the future.

The bright shiny object of the last few years is, of course, social media, a channel that’s still not completely understood but that has, in theory, the potential to radically change the way we market.

Why? Well, to start with, based on our research, influencers are spending 7 hours per week in the US and 9 in Canada on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs. That’s already impressive but when you add to that the finding that influencers are connected, on average, to 108 (US) and 137 (Canada) people in their own social media network, that’s something that gets the attention of marketers – as it should.

While social media shares ease of use with the email channel, it’s this community or network that may hold the key to the channel’s true potential. These individuals have chosen to be connected based on an affinity for a particular community, and are actively engaged with others in it and outside that community too.

Bill McCloskey at ClickZ offers some fascinating examples about the potential power of social media, including this one:

“…look at Marvel Comics, which is one of the top performing ‘advertisers’ in the Twitter space. As of right now, Marvel has around 44,000 followers [63,000+ as I write this post]. But over the last few weeks, it sent out 151 Twitter offers. But more than that: 246 ‘influencers’ have directly rebroadcast that message to their followers. Add it all up and Marvel has exposed its offer to over 66 million eyeballs over the past few weeks!”

Those are some impressive numbers and just a hint of the potential opportunities social media offers marketers. However we do need to distinguish the difference between influencers: some will talk; others will pass along information (as per above) and of utmost value are those that truly influence others – by eliciting action. So whether on social media sites or via email or on the phone, you must understand what you are trying to achieve and ensure that you have designed appropriately.

One more thing bares repeating from my last two posts: even if some channels are better than others to reach particular consumers in particular ways, the fact is these channels work best for marketers when they work together.

For instance, email messages that offer a social-sharing option (like Twitter and Facebook) generate a 30% higher click-through rate than emails without it, according to a new study by email marketing company Get Response. And if the email includes three or more social-sharing options, that click-through rate jumps to 55%.

The bottom line? Social media offers a unique and advantageous opportunity to find, reach, engage and have a continuous dialogue with individuals – both within their social media communities and in their network at large. Just needs to be done right!

In the fourth and final part of this series, I’ll blog about the true answer to the question – which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers?

Gillian MacPherson

Channel Surfing for Influencers: Email

Part 2 of a 4 part series

Which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers to spread the word about your product? In this second of four posts, I take a look at email.

In part 1, I blogged about some of the reasons marketers still consider direct mail an effective way to reach influencers, but the truth is that was only part of the story. Because while DM still has a role to play in engaging influencers to spread the word about your brand, email is also a powerful channel and one that’s becoming more so all the time.

There are, of course, the obvious reasons email is so effective: it’s easy for consumers to forward – a sort of digital word of mouth – and, especially these days, it’s easily accessible whether you’re on your BlackBerry, iPhone, Mac or PC, at home, at work or on the run.

An email campaign may also be cheaper and less labour-intensive to launch: although these days consumers report opening up less of the vast amount of emails received so perhaps cheaper is an illusion. But we do know that recent technology has made targeting, tracking and offer redemption much easier than in the past.

Perhaps where email marketing can be most successful at reaching consumers and convincing influencers is in its interactivity. You can include a url link to your website or blog or Facebook page in which the consumer can immediately connect. And of course you can design an email to offer a level of animation to engage the senses.

Plus, based on a study we just conducted, people have very specific reasons why they like to be marketed via email, including:

• Speed: It’s in your inbox – or in your trash – in a flash
• Convenience: You can read it at work, at home, or anywhere in between
• Environmental: Unless you want to print it out to save or share, trees and our environment get a break

That said, the truth is DM and email can live with each other because they both have an important role to play, as ClickSquared’s Dan Smith explains:

Not all customers respond to communications in the same way… In certain industries – charities come to mind – direct mail remains the primary method for new donor acquisition. Email is used primarily to solicit renewals from existing donors – and in the absence of a response, is often followed by yet another direct mail piece.

The circle of life – marketing style.

In part 3 of this series, I’ll focus on the new kid on the block – social media.

Thoughts?

Gillian MacPhersen

Channel Surfing for Influencers, Part 1: Direct Mail

Which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers to spread the word about your product? In the next four posts, I’ll take a look at the pros and cons of the most widespread channels, beginning with direct mail – hope you’ll join me and share your thoughts.

When VCRs achieved mass-market success in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many pundits predicted the demise of the movie theatre. Who would want to drive to a cinema and sit with a bunch of strangers to watch a new movie when you could now do it in your own living room or bedroom? A lot of people, it turned out. VCRs, then DVD players and other home movie systems, didn’t kill off old school movie-going. They simply created a new channel for Hollywood to market its product. Both have lived together quite successfully ever since.

The same, it turns out, has happened with direct mail. Pioneered on a mass scale in the 1950s by Lester Wunderman and others, this way of reaching consumers and businesses caught on with marketers because, unlike traditional print, billboard and broadcast advertising, direct mail’s effectiveness could be tested, measured and improved on in subsequent campaigns. Despite the advent of email marketing in the 1990s and social marketing today, marketers still consider direct mail a viable and effective way to engage consumers in general and influencers in particular.

Why? Well, for starters, there continues to be a segment of the population that likes to receive things in the mail. While I’m selective about what I like and don’t like to find in my mailbox – I’m not big on grocery flyers, for instance – I do like when I get useful information about products or services that I can hold right in my hands.

I’m not alone and marketers know it. After all, with 90% of word-of-mouth happening face-to-face (Keller Fay Study, 2010), marketers understand the usefulness of offering influencers something tangible they can carry in their purse or pocket and pass along to the friends and family members they’re influencing – like a brochure, a catalogue, even a business card with a name, email address or url printed on it.

And direct mail is also still the king of easy and accurate personalization, in spite of digital marketing’s advances. Plus it continues to beat traditional media in its ability to target industries, regions, niche markets and other highly specific local audiences.

Finally, as effective as marketing via email, Facebook or mobile may be, none has (yet) managed to beam a sample or gift into consumers’ homes without using direct mail to get it there. The tactile surprise and delight factor that direct mail offers highly engaged consumers cannot be underestimated. You know they’ll open it immediately and pay particular attention to the contents from a brand they know and trust.

In part 2 of this series, I’ll focus on direct mail’s spry marketing cousin: email. It’s fast and inexpensive, but is it influencing influencers? Tune in next time when we discuss...

Gillian MacPhersen

Developing a Product? Enlist Your Influencers

Traditionally, product development has had a pretty standard approach – market research to uncover the key insight or consumer need, product development, concept testing, in-market testing and finally launch. Even then current stats show only 1 in 20 new products make it. That’s a lot of time and money for a low likelihood of success and yet it’s critical for brand growth.

Today, a more efficient and cost-effective trend is taking shape, thanks in large part to online forums and the advent of other social media tools – and one that’s right up the alley of influencers who want to be more engaged and share their thoughts and ideas. Some companies are pro-actively inviting influencers to be part of the early product development phase. Why? They’ve realized it’s a great opportunity to include the consumers most involved with the brand and the category, enlisting them to create ideas and rate them.

The concept is straightforward: get your most involved consumers to submit ideas and rate potential new products. Ideally, you get a couple of key benefits: (i) better ideas flow through as they’ve already been vetted by knowledgeable consumers; (ii) time to market can be much faster because you can get info quickly and react faster, especially if you’re working online; (iii) potentially the amount of data or feedback you get can be greater than a few focus groups, making it more reliable.

Plus, the earlier customers – and especially committed influencers – have their say, the more likely a launched product will resonate and succeed with a wider target audience.

Here are just two examples of companies doing this well:

My Starbucks Idea blog for instance, offers Starbucks lovers the chance to share their coffee culture ideas and vote thumbs up or down on the ideas of other customers.

And Dell’s hugely successful IdeaStorm, asks customers to share ideas on the kinds of products they’d like to see Dell develop – 10,000 ideas have been generated through the site in three years and nearly 400 have been implemented so far.

To put it simply, where once the product was the focus of product development, today customers (and their ideas) are. And, it turns out, when customers are given the wheel, they’re more engaged with the brand, respond more positively to the company and talk more about the product.

Or as Paul Rand, President of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) puts it:

“Brands that actively listen and engage, on a sustainable basis, with their customers, consumers and influencers – from product development through social media and customer service – have learned the power and return of being talkable.”

Getting influencers involved and talking early can make all the difference.

What have you heard about using influencers to drive product development? I’ve got to believe more brands are doing it, but few are publicizing it.

Gillian MacPherson

Direct Marketing REDEFINED

In January, the CMA’s Direct Marketing Council presented an updated definition of Direct Marketing here. We received a lot of excellent feedback from leaders in the marketing and direct marketing communities across Canada and a comment or two from the USA. We used this input to refine the definition so it is an even better reflection of the discipline.

The comments clearly demonstrate that Direct Marketers are still very passionate about what we do. We are more focused than ever on generating business results using both relevant messaging and offers to targeted audiences.

There were also many reminders about the importance of measurement. Goodwin Gibson summed it up very well saying, “It is really direct marketing’s measurement DNA (including analytics) that separates it from other marketing disciplines.”

As direct marketing evolves, many of our esteemed colleagues pointed out that leveraging the insights from the data is becoming more and more important for success.

Finally, we wanted to make sure the definition would be meaningful to the neophyte or sophisticated marketer who needs to explain what Direct Marketing is all about.

Here is the new definition based on the contribution of our many colleagues:

Direct Marketing generates profitable business results by using targeted communications to engage specific audiences through a combination of relevant messaging and offers that can be tracked, measured, analyzed, stored and leveraged to drive future marketing initiatives.

The DM Council is planning to communicate this revised definition as broadly as possible in the coming months. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to describe Direct Marketing, please use this definition. Please also forward to your colleagues and associates. Our goal is for this to be the accepted definition in Canada and beyond.

Rosalie McGovern, Chair of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

The Changing Face of the Direct Marketer

As a leader of direct and digital marketing professionals, I have come to the realization that there is a rapid convergence of these two worlds resulting in a new face among direct marketing professionals.

Today’s strategic marketing plans necessitate cross-channel integration that go beyond the traditional channels. Our marketing plans include digital marketing tactics like SEM and social network marketing to help us achieve the end goals of consumer brand awareness, consideration, purchase, retention and loyalty.

The traditional skill sets of a direct marketer, while highly data driven and analytical, is no longer sufficient. Similarly, web marketers need to leverage the highly valuable skills and discipline that direct marketers bring to the table in order to ensure marketing plans are trackable, measurable and ultimately accountable to the program’s end goals and objectives.
This often makes recruitment exercises challenging whereby I find myself seeking marketing candidates who not only have a firm grasp on the ‘science’ of direct marketing (not an easy find) but can contextualize their application to emerging digital marketing technologies and platforms (an even harder find).

Would love to hear others’ views on the changing face of the direct marketer.

Martha Turner, AVP Marketing Services and Campaign Management, Aviva Canada & member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

Direct Mail: Content vs. Design

Imagine opening the mailbox and every piece of direct mail looked identical, the card stock was the same size, shape and colour—the only thing separating the two was content. Now imagine the same situation except the complete opposite—where every piece of mail had a different shape, size, and colour, but not a lick of content. So what is more important: content or design?

The beautiful thing about direct mail is that it is (without a doubt) the most measureable form of advertising available. It is not overly expensive; a company can directly tailor messaging to their target audience—current clients or potential new customers that match the demo/psych/geo of your audience profile. When conducting a direct mail campaign, one must ask: do I hire a graphic artist or a copywriter? Well, in my opinion, it all depends on how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. Large companies such as: McDonalds, Blockbuster, Rogers and Bell, contain a high level of brand recognition. The golden arches of McDonalds restaurant can be spotted a mile away on a foggy day by a 5 year old. So what does this mean in terms of a direct mail campaign?

People are much more likely to take interest in a mailing piece that they recognize. If they received a white piece of paper in the mail that read, “McDonalds, two can dine”, they would think of the offer as a prank. This is where design is vital in a campaign. Smaller companies may not encompass brand recognition as well as larger companies—this is where I feel content plays a more important role while still complementing design. A company cannot measure the success of their campaign if the mailing piece is just a design to build brand awareness. There needs to be an offer, a call to action, and more importantly, persuasive content.

Content will drive people to the product/location and word of mouth will build the brand. It can be argued that content is design—typography is a brilliant branding strategy that many organizations use. I asked a marketing professional, Lindsey Fair, what her take on the subject is, her response included, “Without sitting on the fence (because that’s a copout), I would have to say the design. If it doesn’t catch my attention to begin with I will never even read the content. But, content can make it or break it, the content is what can make me throw it out.” I would be very curious to read what other marketing professionals feel about this debate.

What do you think is more important in a direct marketing campaign—content or design?

By Eli Nicholson, a student at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, ON

What is Direct Marketing?

The CMA Direct Marketing Council explores and responds to various issues affecting direct marketing professionals. We recently reviewed and updated our mandate to ensure that we continue to deliver value to CMA members.

The path to this mandate led to many interesting discussions on the current state of direct marketing (DM). We looked at traditional definitions of DM and agreed it was time for an update.

The traditional definition of Direct Marketing is: a marketing discipline that seeks to elicit an action (such as an order or a request for further information) from a selected group of customers in response to a communication. The communication may be in any of a variety of media and response should be measurable.

The world of the direct marketer has changed with the proliferation of online and digital media, changes in consumer preferences and access to information, and the move towards insights-based marketing. The differentiator that DM once owned – the ability to measure results – is now a requirement for most, if not all, disciplines and media.

Taking all of this into account, the council drafted a new definition: Direct Marketing is the use of media to directly engage targeted audiences to drive profitable business results.

However, while preparing this blog to invite input from the industry, I realized that the definition needs to go one step further and expand on DM’s measurability factor.

I propose an even more refined definition:

Direct Marketing is the use of media to directly engage targeted audiences to drive profitable business results that can be tracked, recorded, analyzed and stored for future retrieval and use.

So, DM Council and CMA blog readers, what do you think?

By Rosalie McGovern, General Manager, Marketing and Business Development, Direct Marketing at Canada Post Corporation and the Chair of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

Traditional Marketing is Dead

In the early nineties there was a notion that the internet would alter the face of Direct Marketing. Unless you live in a cave, it has! But it is not just the Internet that has changed the way we market products or services, technology has also had a dramatic impact on how we conduct and market our businesses.

In fact, it is my position that technology has surpassed the marketer. There is a new breed of marketer that is emerging from our schools and universities. They understand the power of the web and know how to use it well. But in the world of clicks, unique clicks, soft bounces, downloads, hard bounces, followers, blogs and viewers, two basic fundamentals of marketing are slowly disappearing: accountability and measurability.

Unless the goal of an online marketing campaign is to raise awareness, business owners are solely interested in ROMI. Unfortunately, tracking mechanisms are often excluded from the Call to Action (sometimes there is no CTA) on many new initiatives and metrics such as those listed above do not demonstrate success (at least in a monetary fashion).

So what do we do?

Vish Ramkissoon, Partner FSA Datalytic, is a member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council.

5 Ways to Beat the Attention Shortage

Economist Herbert Simon put forward the theory that abundance of one resource creates a shortage in another.

The internet has allowed for the fast, easy and almost free creation of massive amounts of content. Overabundance. This has created a scarcity of attention. This poverty of attention is the problem for marketers. How to gain attention when there is so much competition.

5 ways to break the Attention Poverty cycle are:

1 - Stay right on target. There are certain publications I look forward to and read cover to cover every issue because their topic is highly interesting to me. The moral is - speak to people who are interested in you message.

2 - Use illustrations and pictures with captions. Pictures can break the attention block and captions get read.

3 - Use headlines to capture attention. The headline is to an advertisement or message what the first chapter of a book is. Get them hooked and they will read it all.

4 - Keep it short. People choose what to pay attention to by how long they think it will take them to deal with it.

5 - Make it simple. People like simple and any roadblock or complexity will stop them. Simplicity pays.

Some of these are old fashioned marketing 101 but some (like the keep it short) are even more important now than ever.

Size Doesn't Matter

Truly - it doesn't. Here's why....

I recently moderated the Direct Marketing Creative Roundtable on behalf of the CMA (and its Direct Marketing Council) at the Drake Hotel. We had a small but engaged audience - and 3 incredibly talented and diverse presenters: Mike Halminen, VP, Creative Director at MacLaren MRM, Clare Meridew, VP, Creative Director at Grey Worldwide and Tracy Coen, Senior Art Director at Rivet.

Mike spoke about how to use interactive design to increase engagement and ultimately, response. Think about the idea that will interest a consumer and incent response vs standard 'boiler plate', 'kill it and bill it' creative mentalities. Push the medium but stay true to accountability.

Clare spoke about how the online channel is a perfect medium for direct marketing in terms of insight gathering, quick results, ease of measurement and access to fast and efficient innovation.

Finally Tracy spoke of how to cut through the clutter by using emotion and impact in design. And staying true to our Council's philosophy of integration, demonstrated this using the most traditional of channels, direct mail.

All 3 creative hot shots showed great work that most importantly drove business results. And our audience asked many questions, probed through to understand original strategies and genuinely connected to the presenters and their material.

Small audience + big ideas = 1 great roundtable. Size doesn't matter.

Can't wait for next year.

Yes but is it personal?

In my role as a Direct Mail Specialist, I am exposed to many direct mail pieces that are created by marketers trying to talk one-to-one to their customers or prospects. Too often I find marketers are still only taking advantage of minimal information that is available in their databases, and are not taking advantage of the technologies available to them.

As technology has advanced, the opportunity to create better targeted mailings has increased.

When laser printing became the preferred method of personalization for direct mail letters, some marketers embraced the ability to communicate with a personalized message while others only littered the recipient’s letter with their name over and over again.

A perfect example of a company using their database to its fullest potential is an automotive manufacturer that created an ongoing “service” mailing to their customers that included a scanned watermark of their specific vehicle in the background of a letter that referenced their make and model, dealer name, address, phone number, sales and service hours of operation, Service Manager’s name, and signature, a map to locate the dealer, and a specific offer on a coupon that was selected based on the dealer’s preference, and value of the vehicle.

Since the introduction of VPOD (variable print on demand), more emphasis has been placed on variable images printed in colour that are unique to the recipient based on their segmented data group.

Our company recently sent out a self-promotional mailing that I feel is a great example of effectively using technology to create a highly personalized piece. The objective of the mailing was to generate qualified leads by driving responders to our Website to play Texas Hold’ em, for the opportunity to win a $1,000 gift certificate to a casino. This made for a relevant communication, as our audience profiling efforts proved that this was an attractive offer to our target audience.

A letter was tailored to the recipient with signature and contact information of an assigned company representative and inter-company division based on their industry segment. A fully-variable brochure was created that included the recipient’s first name, logo of the assigned division, name and image of their assigned representative, their unique Game PIN, and 2 randomly selected playing cards. Both of these personalized pieces were matched and inserted into an envelope with another brochure that was specific to the recipient’s segment using selective inserting technology.

All of the noted elements made for a highly personalized piece based on data segmentation. Will the recipients of our mailing appreciate the data variable intricacies that were involved to make this piece? Maybe not. Will they feel that the mail piece talks to them on an individual level? I’m betting on it.

The tools are there, we have the technology, let’s use it to create more relevant communications with our intended audiences.

I would love to hear your comments on how testing the level of personalization or variable images has affected your response rates.

Authored by Troy Draper, Direct Mail Specialist, Smart DM

Can We Design a Conference via Social Networks?

We all know social networking works on many levels but has anyone ever used it to design a conference? Specifically for a conference on a fairly traditional topic—Direct Marketing? Let’s be the first!

The organizing committee for the conference had this idea that we would like the community of attendees to help shape the day. This would be an interesting experiment in how engaged in social networking members really are. We need your help!

First, throw out the notion that direct marketing is only direct mail. Direct Marketing is much more than that. It really could be anything from SMS, e-mail, calls and more.

Aside from new channels there are a lot of other uses for technology in direct marketing; most obvious is the growth of analytics and results reporting. There is no glamour but it is becoming table stakes in the Direct Marketing arena.

Some of the existing ideas we have for the conference is to structure it from a life cycle approach (from strategy to targeting/ analytics/testing to the creative and offer and then wrapping up with reporting) overlaid with a multi channel approach. We would of course include the obvious – speakers with a leading edge perspective for each topic. As well we thought we would do some “speed dating” at the mid point of the day….attendees could pick or be assigned three or four tables to be at for 10 minutes with a lead with an interesting subject to discuss…then rotate.

Here’s how we could use your help. Tell us who the speakers should be? Who should lead the roundtable discussions?

To be heard, comment on the blog, solicit your colleagues for input, post a link to your social networking sites or simply email the CMA lead Jeanette.

This is your opportunity to shape your own customized conference on Direct Marketing. Tell us what you need to know. We look forward to hearing from you.

Crossing the Line, Part 2

Building brand equity through Direct Mail (Part 1 here)

I have always been envious of mass advertising and its hold on brand! Mass is a sexy means to promote anything, and in the words of my favourite Absolutely Fabulous heroine, Edina Monsoon, it ‘turns even the dull into delicious…’
But as our media world becomes more and more fragmented, enhancing brand equity is no longer a single domain’s claim. Direct mail is proving instrumental in enhancing the associations a brand creates in the mind of the consumer – in other words, building brand equity.

Why would direct mail enhance brand equity? I believe when direct mail is timely, relevant and compelling, it acts as a ‘peak-positive’ (if untimely, irrelevant and lacking a call-to-action, as a ‘peak-negative’) experience for the consumer.

Nobel prize-winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, points out that people only remember two things during an experience – how they feel at the peak (no matter how good or how bad) and how they feel at the end. These peak-end feelings summarize the whole experience process and are stored in our brains at a subconscious level. These feelings eventually direct our next buying decisions; while the proportion and duration of pleasure or pain throughout the whole experience barely registers in our memory – we only remember the peak-end. (Quote from: Branded Customer Experience Ikea vs. Staples – by www.gccrm.com)

Case in Point

To demonstrate how brand perception is enhanced with direct mail in the mix, consider how brand attributes vary in the mind of the consumer when the latter is exposed to mass media only versus mass media plus dm. In a follow-up survey to Telus’ Addressed Admail recipients and to a control group exposed to mass media only, the addressed admail group:

-Perceived TELUS as a company that delivers great customer service at a significantly higher rate than control
-Recalled TELUS advertisements in other media by at least 6% over control
-Expressed less positive opinions about the quality and reliability of high-speed service provided by TELUS’s largest competitor; specifically, the competitor’s brand attributes were scrutinized or put into question based on exposure to Telus’ detailed offering in the direct mail piece (Full Case Study here.)

In addition to the qualitative results, the quantitative results from the campaign also align with the peak-end theory; namely, the feeling generated during the mail moment (the peak) directed the next buying decision. How? Recipients of the direct mail piece signed up for Telus high-speed internet at twice the rate of the control group.

We all agree that managing the brand is a complex marketing activity with increasingly more viral influence. Still, we should disengage from the limiting view that mass media is the only viable brand-enhancing medium and to keep in mind that direct mail, when done properly, is a critical component for building and increasing brand equity.

Is Direct Marketing still direct?

I've been pondering this question for a while (as much as it pains me to admit this publicly). However, as an individual who has built my career in the field of Direct Marketing, I've stayed close to how our business is evolving courtesy of the internet.

Direct Marketing used to be about stamps, data models, customer segments and reams and reams of results (good or bad). It was one to one. It was what we understood. It was our arsenal for clients who complained that they couldn't prove the worth of tv or radio.

Now, Direct Marketing is still about data, still about customer segments, but less about talking to one consumer in one specific way. The internet has enabled us to create customized campaigns and target niche audiences - but it's really one to many, vs one to one, or in the 'olden days' - one to everyone.

I believe Direct Marketing is still about developing insight based communication but now it's broadcast to smaller groups of like minded individuals via the world wide web. Blogs, social media forums, sponsored content, outbound emails, applications, etc etc....are all created daily to cater to the needs of distinct groups. Mail is no longer the only way to speak to a consumer 'directly'.

That said - in light of our new reality - how would you define the new DM?