Deciding on the correct formats and mediums are essential elements when creating and planning direct mail campaigns. The utilisation of both offline and online channels and how they can complement each other is also vitally important for meeting the campaign objectives and the overall results achieved.
The format of your campaigns will be determined when you develop the campaign plan and decide on your overall objective. These objectives will then guide you as to what channels to utilise and the best approach to achieve the desired result. Marketing is now very much a results-driven functional role, therefore an integrated approach will maximise campaign effectiveness. This is the simplest and easiest route to ensure success and the ability for closed loop reporting and full visibility of campaign results.
When starting a new project or developing a new marketing programme I always recommend reflecting on past successful campaigns, and also from time to time consulting marketing definitions to see if those words still ring true today. One of my favourites is Philip Kotler, he said: ‘Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit’ (Kotler, Philip. According to Kotler: the world’s foremost authority on marketing answers your questions, 2005). I believe this is still as true today as it was back in 2005. Both online and offline campaigns have a role to play, given the massive change in marketing techniques within the last decade and the recent onset and prevalence of ‘big data’. My advice would be to just read that sentence again and again when you are planning your next direct mail campaign. Then remember to personalise the campaign to ensure it maximises the chosen medium and creates the correct results.
Traditional techniques
With this definition in mind you need to consider the overall campaign objective to ensure you plan for success. An integrated approach for campaigns is where you should start, but it is essential that a direct mail campaign also matches with the overall objectives of the business. Marketing departments in the past have had a habit of getting on with things without consulting the rest of the business – this is an error. I have found success is often helped by receiving feedback from the stakeholders from the start of the campaign, to ensure any changes they feel need to be made to reflect the current state of the business can be put into the mix to ensure success at the very beginning. It also gets everyone onboard and supporting the campaign from the outset.
Many organisations will still have current corporate or solution brochures and customer magazines, and they may well be in both print and digital format. You should keep this top of mind when deciding on the format and mediums of your future marketing campaigns where there is room for both offline and online channels. Or is this a campaign where all new material and content would need to be commissioned and created? There is no harm in putting a new spin on an old technique, because overall direct marketing in its various guises works, it is just how you put the ball into play will be how it differs.
Customer magazines still serve a purpose as they can been seen as more informative rather than a sales vehicle and they can also communicate subtle positives about a business such as recent customer wins or charitable work e.g. Red Nose day or local community support. CSR was top of the business agenda not more than five years ago but it was just another phase like carbon footprint that is not so much in the public eye currently. Magazines can be seen as a constant communication piece and can often be a great place to integrate content and act as an alternative call-to-action for a campaign as well as the more formal news outlined above.
Company merchandise is still as popular as ever. A number of prospects, customers and sales people like to receive polo shirts, pens, caps and also coffee mugs these are the top three most requested items from my clients. There is a large variety of corporate items available but if they can be integrated as part of a campaign and the budget can extend to merchandise, you could consider this as some items stay on people’s desks for a longer period of time than a four-page colour brochure. Leather bound folders and smartphone covers are also popular with contacts further up the target organisation. These items can all cover the message you want delivered.
Time, is a word used a lot nowadays by many departments throughout any business. Make time for the important tasks, slow down and insert a pause. The best direct marketing campaigns will be those where the team has planned it from scratch, involving other departments within the business and matching it to the overall business plan and objectives. I am a firm believer in less is more and a smaller number of longer campaigns will create a greater deal of success than a larger number of shorter campaigns.
This is also critical for success as Kotler also mentions that, ‘Marketing is often performed by a department within the organisation. This is both good and bad. It’s good because it brings together a group of trained people who focus on the marketing task. It’s bad because marketing activities should not be carried out in a single department – they should be manifest in all the activities of the organisation’ (Kotler, Philip. According to Kotler: the world’s foremost authority on marketing answers your questions. Amacon, New York, 2005).
At Nortel, we developed what we described as high value direct marketing campaign with a very small target market and the higher end of the decision making chain for the companies that we were targeting within the UK. The targets were CEO, CIO & CFO and depending upon role and the seniority of decision maker within an organisation of which there was only a total of 120 companies, we had three distinct messages and deliverables. All linked to a microsite with the same three distinct messages online. It was a very well planned campaign with precise execution and excellent results. The most important element of this campaign that would ultimately determine success was the database, and this was the area where we spent most of our planning time and budget.
Digital techniques
With the advent and availability of digital channel metrics, today’s marketer can provide real-time feedback on the success of a campaign right up the organisation. Video content, CRM and marketing automation can also aid this need for instant updates and campaign progress.
The extent that digital can impact your campaigns and overall marketing effort really depends on your budget. The price for video production, personalised printing and social networking integration to complement a campaign has decreased significantly over the past few years and can usually be fulfilled via one marketing supplier or even inhouse. This change of focus is reflected in the fact that over the years more traditional B2B agencies have changed their names and, more importantly, their focus to become known as B2B digital agencies rather than print and fulfilment marketing agencies.
Equally marketing roles have changed from a traditional marketing communications managers to titles such as digital marketing managers or online marketing manager. The growth in channel marketing roles is substantial. More emphasis and consideration needs to be taken when planning a campaign approach that incorporates large amounts of data. ‘Big data’ is a term that is now being used as much or more than CRM was being used in the noughties. The amount of data required to roll out a campaign, if it were a multi-region, multi-language activity, it might make sense to link to and utilise marketing automation platforms such as Aprimo, Eloqua or Silverpop.
When thinking about exploiting all the channels possible to reach a prospect, there is a tendency for marketers to create campaign sites or microsites. The reason for this is simple to maintain control of all elements of the campaign and to track real-time campaign results. Another reason that comes into play here is, for bigger organisations, the need to involve the IT department, which could mean completing business case documents and building more time into the plan to justify the internal investment in time and resource to support a direct marketing campaign. This is where marketing automation models should be considered, as I have had recent conversation about sharing automated activities via channel partners which also could revolutionise the way vendors and partner go to market and promote their partnership and joint solutions.
Again, multi-regional and multi-language campaigns can lend themselves to a digital only approach, and particularly in EMEA it makes more sense to have a central campaign hub and then create the campaign and message. You will then only need to build and invest in one reporting mechanism rather than repeating for every country and language.
Projecting returns
ROI is a term that is largely discussed but not often fully understood or related back to the original objectives. Real-time reporting allows the entire organisation to be bought into and support the marketing campaigns as they develop. I like to use the term ‘metrics-driven marketing’, if you can’t measure it, don’t do it.
With this in mind if we just take one element again from Kotler, ‘Marketing is the science’, this should provide us with the answer for this section. A very simple way to calculate ROI is by using the formula, the return of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is usually expressed as a percentage or a ratio. Within the discipline of marketing, the term ROI is constantly referred to when discussing and developing potential marketing campaigns from the top of the organisation down. Vendors especially use this terminology as they are trying to entice partners to take up their pre-developed and boxed-up campaigns, while trying to adhere to the global guidelines for their particular partner programme.
Further up the chain questions about programme success and partner engagement
will always be asked and based on the ROI delivery before committing to any level of funding. If you have followed the simple, steps of programme development then the ROI figure will be easy to calculate and provide to the vendor or the party that will help fund your campaign. In many places where I worked previously we were encouraged to always strive to create a 10:1 return for every campaign you managed. I think that is a good guide.
Recently, I have presented to many partners in the UK for various US vendors within marketing about using or using parts of the ‘marketing funnel’. As is the theme throughout my discussion, I like to keep things simple. The basic theory of the funnel is the more you can put in the more you get out. I am of the belief that the more quality you put in at the top the better quality leads and appointments that will come out the bottom, which is a much better result for everyone involved. As you will recall I am more inclined to encourage marketers to create smaller targeted, on message and more easily manageable campaigns, rather than the big spray and pray. There are plenty of measurements being used by marketers that apply to both offline and online activities. In both forms of direct marketing you will be measuring response rates, views, click-throughs, opens, cost-per-contact, cost-per-lead, and even cost-per-opportunity.
The more metrics and intelligence that a marketing department can deliver per campaign to the business the more beneficial marketing campaigns going forward will be for the business overall.
Having the ability to predict the correct response and type of metrics per campaign is the role of the modern marketing department whether they only use offline techniques or only online techniques or a combination of both. It is essential that marketers deliver quality leads to their sales colleagues, and also deliver the quantity of leads that they committed to in the objectives.
Discussions can involve an MQL (marketing qualified lead) being converted into an SQL (sales qualified lead). One measure that I have used for a while now and seems quite well accepted across the board is the BANT criteria, which is simply defined as: budget, authority need and timeline. In some recent vertical specific campaigns utilising short four-minute videos developed for the ShoreTel’s customer advocacy programme, we have realised a 60 per cent click-through-rate as opposed to standard HTML mailer that could possibly only yield a seven to 10 per cent click-through-rate.
If we create a campaign that should meet the objective of creating new opportunities within the given target market using the appropriate message. If marketing can deliver the types of leads that sales are requesting, the process and handoff between marketing and sales and the overall results of the business will no doubt improve. Some business leaders will request that marketing go further in their lead qualification, which is an area that needs to be explored before the campaign goes live.
Once the leads are created the other area where marketers need to develop skills and understanding is by using a CRM system. These days it seems that Salesforce is the default system used by many firms, large or small. Microsoft CRM Dynamics is quite widely used also. These systems all have the ability to track marketing campaigns and the process is fairly straightforward. Create a name, the dates, the region, cost and overall objective and you can track the actual real-time success of your campaign. Seeing whether it matches up to your objective and marketing funnel calculations at the beginning of the campaign.
Summary
There are many options available for the marketer of today. Overall there is room for a mix of traditional and digital channels to ensure that you always develop successful direct marketing campaigns that reach and if not exceed your original objectives. I would not advocate managing a lot of small campaigns; I believe fewer more extended and better targeted campaigns can produce better results. Ultimately the format and medium that you choose to use for your direct marketing campaigns should help you to reach your objective and achieve the target results whether it be number of leads or prevenue.
