The Direct Marketing Network

Test It First…

Referring to the “11 simple ways to improve your DM effectiveness” article, point four is, from my experience the most undervalued and overlooked step within in the DM process.

But it’s also one of the most complex phases, with so many aspects to consider.  

More than often there is no additional time or budget allowed for testing, which is a pity as there is so much to be gained by doing so, other than ensuring you get the responses you want and of course a return on your investment. This is particularly relevant within current market conditions where budgets are tight and expectations are high, so why not give it the care and attention it deserves.  

Before you get to the all important split-mail testing phase, there are several other aspects of testing you could do with your mail house of choice. Sometimes, mail houses are often at the end of a very long line, and in some cases there is no time to change, enhance or add value to an opportunity when a fixed lodgement date must be met at all costs, and for good reason.

In instances such as these mail houses become more process focussed as you’d expect, but why not take the time and socialise campaign objectives and expected measures in advance so that they can be of more value to you.

Whist many have the perception mail houses are factories who fold and insert letters in to envelopes, which in part is true, they also come with years of experience, and in many cases manage the design, printing and some, the ability to deploy your message through a wide range of channels and can present you with numerous test options that may enhance your objective.

Your mail house then starts to act more like a partner, providing solutions and ideas as well as managing a number of channel/s on your behalf.  Over time they become more aware of the bigger picture and gain a deeper understanding of the need to integrate, or at least be aware of what else is happening within other channels, even if only from a timing perspective.  

Paul Sutherland is the regional Manager at Kinetic 121, Wellington. 

11 Simple Methods to Improve Your Direct Marketing Effectiveness

Before you execute your next direct marketing initiative consider the following checklist. Interrogating your task against each of these points will improve your chances of direct marketing success, which contributes to improved sales activity, job satisfaction, performance bonuses and career progression. You will improve your thinking, the briefs to your direct marketing creative agency and the subsequent results of your activity.

Print this out and keep it as a reference.

Ingredients for Direct Marketing Success.

1. Something in it for the customer? □
2. Simplified message? □
3. Budget analysis & objectives? □
4. Test plan? □
5. Data quality and usage? □
6. Does it stand out? □
7. What’s the follow up? □
8. How will it be measured? □
9. Time bound message? □
10. Referral opportunity? □
11. Brand fit? □

Introduction

Firstly, let me overcome a common misconception. Direct Marketing is NOT direct mail. Sure, direct mail is the birthplace of direct marketing but it no longer ends there. Direct marketing principles embrace all advertising and personalised communications. Press advertising, TV, email, text messaging, sales promotions, websites and telephone are all direct marketing methods. Put simply, Direct Marketing is any message that’s intended to stimulate measurable (and immediate) actions.

Unfortunately for the direct marketing world, the industry suffers from poor strategy. The industry is smaller than stands to reason because would-be direct marketers aren’t applying strong thought to their campaign planning. This lack of thinking means their campaigns are not given a fair chance to succeed. Most often, the lack of thought comes from a lack of training and knowledge. Frankly, the ignorance within the industry is frightening. There are too few practitioners who are aware of the tried and proven techniques that work time and time again. This is not a general statement – there are also some talented, well studied individuals who know what works and push the envelope to uncover new methods.

Direct marketing isn’t hard. The methods are logical and common-sense. After all, it is rational for us to learn from the successes and failures of others. Just as repeating other people’s mistakes can be expensive, emulating their successes can be extremely rewarding. Put simply, anybody in the industry from client through to agency planner and creative types should know the basics of the trade. If you, your staff and your agency don’t know these basics you are putting your business at risk.

Eleven Simple Methods to Improve Your Direct Marketing Effectiveness offers an easy to comprehend and follow framework to improve your direct marketing result. It covers the basics of the trade inside 30-minutes. None of the concepts presented here are new and none of them are mine. I’m simply one of too-few who have chosen to study and subscribe to what has worked for others. I now want to share this with you and spare you the pain of reading multiple text books and case studies.

Ironically, the limited knowledge of direct marketing techniques offers a substantial opportunity. All businesses compete for mind-share, so your competition is everyone who wants to be heard, not just your direct competitors. Using theory as a guide will ensure your message gets noticed above those that do not.

1. What’s in it for me?

Be customer driven, not market driven. You need to demonstrate to the customer that you know and understand them.

However tempting it is, don’t talk about features of your product. Talk about its benefits – what’s in it for the customer? Thinking further about the customer, we need to look at the market environment. What are they likely to know of your competitors? Highlight the unique benefits of your product or service.

If we know something about the customer that may indicate a preference, then tell them (see points 5 and 6). For instance, a car dealer should know your own buying preferences based on your previous purchase. So when the new model is launched – they should tell you it’s available just the way you like it; red with automatic transmission and leather upholstery. It makes it more appealing and shows the customer you know and remember them. Your communication becomes a service.
Most importantly in the ‘what’s in it for me’ section is the offer. The offer is both the product or service claim and the incentive – the icing on the cake. Every communication needs an offer. Don’t hide it; make it sing out from your communication. And make it relevant both in terms of its fit with your brand and appeal with your audience. Lastly, make it unique rather than something that’s widely available in the category or in the marketplace. Whilst ‘money can’t buy’ experiences are hard to create they can work well as catchy offers. Trend setting products allow you to build interest off the back of a craze but may have limited appeal – who doesn’t have an iPod?
If you’re still having trouble coming up with an offer think about the following ides as stimulation.

>Pay Later
>Discount
>Free Gift Money Back Guarantee
>Buy One Get One Free
>Prize Draw
>Lucky Number Sweepstake
>Trade In

Be sure to adhere to legislative requirements around your offer.

2. Simplify your message.

You need to get to your customer quickly and give them a reason to engage with the rest of your message. To do this you need to make the first impression simple. For a mail piece, give them enough reason to open the piece. For a press ad, show them a reason to read the body copy. Most importantly, don’t make it too hard to absorb. Avoid the temptation to try and cram it all into the headline. Keep it simple and focused.

When simplifying your message, think about your core proposition. Emotional appeals are most important here, not rational features. Customers buy on emotion. They post- rationalise the decision they have already made to justify their emotions. Use imagery wisely, after all, as the adage says, a picture says a thousand words and we rarely have room for all one-thousand words – certainly your audience doesn’t have time to read them! Employ white or empty space to get your core message to stand out.

You’re seeking a response, so don’t be scared to ask for it. In fact put it in neon. Tell your audience exactly what you want them to do and make it obvious. Don’t tack a phone number on the bottom of an ad and expect them to call. Make the reply device obvious and integrate throughout your creative.

In a web or email environment use action buttons that look like… buttons! We all know what they look like – beveled edges and all. Designers love to do things differently but only let them do so within reason. If people don’t know where they should click, they are less likely to do so. Jakob Nielsen has researched this area and has proven ‘regular’ buttons work best.

If you are developing a direct mail piece, remember the most important part – the letter. Everyone has limited time and chooses what they read and consume. When they engage with a direct mail piece they almost always read the letter. So, make sure the letter speaks for itself; that it articulates the key message and exactly what action you desire. Don’t make the letter too complex or they might not read anything!

3. Do the budgets.

Never start a direct marketing project without building the cost justifications first. Sure, if it’s a success, you may never be asked for the business case, but what if it’s not? You need to make sure the right budgetary analysis has been done up-front so that you know the sensitivities and best and worst case outcomes.

Avoid the temptation to brief your agency and get sold on sexy creative until you’re sold on your own business case. Creative development costs money and embarking on this prematurely can be dangerous. My agency friends like to seduce you and your colleagues with sizzling creative but as much as I love strong creative, it is important that the strategic thinking and business logic is in place first. This will actually help the creative process as you will be able to move forward with confidence and give the agency the right budgetary parameters.

When embarking on your business case, it’s important that you don’t try to make the economics work from the get-go. The right approach is to put a ‘toe in the water’ first so you minimise your up-front investment. But equally, you should make a projection across your full list in order to validate the full potential of your marketing activity. This will confirm that it’s worthwhile for you to undertake your test.

Lifetime Value (LTV) calculations are also important to factor in to your business case. Consider the long term implications of your marketing. For customer acquisition, consider the customer base in terms of their levels of repurchase and attrition. This will ensure you predict the full value of a new relationship and will make the business case work hardest.

In most cases, your financial considerations will directly correlate to your campaign objectives. Work backwards from your expected financial outcome to establish your objectives. Make sure the outcome is realistic!! For instance, a direct mail campaign to a cold list that needs a 30% response rate to succeed could be a tough ask!

You may need multiple objectives across different components within a campaign. Your overall communication objective in a direct mail campaign may be to achieve a level of sales. But break this down to the number of leads you need, the conversion to sale rate and the expected average sales value. This will help your campaign thinking and ensures you are measuring to the right level of detail. You can also delegate the objectives to salespeople or call centres. Every link in the campaign should be aware of exactly what you want them to achieve.

4. Test it first.

Your budgetary analysis alone should give you every justification to test the campaign. The beauty of testing is it constrains your up-front investment and risk. You also have the opportunity to optimise your campaign and generate a stronger overall result through incremental improvements in performance.

To rationalise why to test, let me give you an example. Let’s say you have an acquisition mailer and a list of 200,000 selected recipients. Your business case shows a break-even at a 2% response rate and to produce and mail this campaign in full is likely to cost in the order of say $350,000. Alternatively, we can produce it in three stages – an initial drop of 20,000 and two separate drops of 90,000 each. Producing in this way means the test mailing of just 20,000 units would cost $90,000. What – that’s $4.50 per unit as opposed to $1.75 per unit for the full campaign!

What this illustrates is that when it comes to your implementing your test, you will be working with a relatively small audience pool, yet you will need to cover the fixed costs that are associated with developing a campaign platform. Despite the disproportionate unit costs, it still makes complete sense to test. Because in the event of a 1% response rate and ‘campaign failure’ your worst case exposure is just $90,000 rather than $350,000.

While it might cost a little more overall to split the mailing and to allow a market test, it is the right thing to do. It allows you to be cautious and avoid the potential to throw more good money after bad. Certainly don’t let an initial ‘loss’ deter you – look at the bigger picture. Because you’ve already covered the cost of your campaign development, your ongoing activity will have a much greater marginal profit. Some of the most profitable direct marketing programmes originated from a test that lost plenty.
The beauty of direct marketing is we can do conduct tests effectively because each recipient effectively receives a unique execution. Technology advancements have gone a long way to make this conceivable but also infinitely measurable. Certainly, it is much more accurate to learn from a test than to rely on traditional research. A market test doesn’t suffer from biases such as group-think behaviours that can be present in qualitative research. The direct marketing test isn’t so much judged, it actually judges itself.

Despite the assurances your test provides, there are still risks with your rollout activity. In particular, seasonality and market conditions can have a severe impact. For this reason it is sensible to continue to conduct your marketing in chunks, testing and learning along the way at different times of the year. Importantly, you should never leap from a small test to a very large quantity, it is much safer to go small medium then large, so that your rollout is not subject at risk of an extreme market or seasonal condition.

5. Remember the data.

Direct Marketers will know data is the single most important factor influencing campaign results. Poor data quality will impact on the deliverability and accuracy of your message. Likewise, data that’s lacking depth or richness will impact on your ability to target accurately and make relevant statements within your message to demonstrate understanding and build empathy with your customer. At its most basic level, the data will determine how you can communicate - if you only have an email address, then you are restricted to email as a vehicle.

My previous comments on budgeting and testing (Points 3 & 4) clearly show why it’s important to test data. I can’t over-emphasize the need to test data in advance of a large scale rollout – I have witnessed too many campaigns that demonstrate drastically different results across data segments or data sources. The financial success of the long term campaign most often hinges on the data.

While testing is important, everything possible should be done in advance to protect your campaign suffering from poor quality data. Firstly you should check with your list provider to check exactly how the data has been compiled. If possible, get a copy of the form that the respondent has completed. In particular, study the opt-in clause – is it clear that the data will be used for other purposes? Is the data collection compliant with Privacy and AntiSpam legislation? You should also determine when the information was gathered and how frequently the data has been used to drive marketing messages – a good list is neither over nor under used. Establish what is done with undelivered or returned mail and what rate of undeliverable you should expect with your activity.

With direct communications you will inevitably be asked where you sourced your data. You can save them the trouble and display your integrity by telling them this upfront in your introduction or at least as a footnote. In addition, offer clear and simple mechanisms for opting-out of future communications. If your data is sourced from another company consider using joint branding to wrap your offer. Always display the phone number, address or website where a customer can make requests about their data.

There are few Direct Marketing initiatives that do not necessitate database cleaning or enrichment. Removing of existing customers or prospects who have already been contacted is a typical necessity. There are also cases where both your targeting and your message relevance can be improved by welding together multiple data sources. For instance, if you are working with partners to launch a loyalty initiative, it makes sense to understand if a customer has a relationship with more than one of those partners.

When it comes to putting the data to use you should consider all of the available fields and how we can make the message as relevant to each customer that fits your target. You can enhance your creative idea by adding personalisation and versioning to tailor your message to different subsets within your list. If there is data that ties in with your offer, make sure you show the customer that you know them and that it is because of that you are in contact.

The very best Direct Marketing activities are win-win for both you and your customer, because the customer believes they are being offered a value-added service. I always encourage clients to put themselves in the shoes of the recipient and ask; are you pleased to be on this database and receiving this communication? If the answer’s yes, then there’s a better than fair chance the Direct Marketing will succeed.

6. Make it stand out.

Creative does matter. And while there are proven creative methods to success, these should be mixed with new and exciting ways to get a message to your market. Good creative not only ensures your message gets noticed, it ensures your message is remembered and talked about. Every message is a ‘moment of truth’ a chance to enhance or devalue customer perceptions of your brand. So it stands to reason that we need to think beyond the immediate campaign objective and look to influence their ongoing emotions toward your brand personality. But how?

The majority of executions fail to explore the possibilities of the medium. This is a hangover from the frequency principle employed in traditional advertising and the false notion that direct executions are about the brand first and the message second.
In Direct Marketing the customer owns the message and they actively choose to absorb it. The execution needs to immediately show the recipient that it’s a completely new message and to this end, the communication should be clearly distinct from previous contact. The message should retain consistency to the degree that it is obvious who it’s from, but the central message must scream above the corporate branding. A template approach is too often employed, meaning that visually messages blur together with a degree of sameness rather than being received with impact. Designers are not naturally Direct Marketers and need to be well briefed to account for this premise.

Creatively we should always be looking to break the rules and take the medium to another level. The creative boundary within Direct Marketing is far from being reached and nowhere is this more apparent than with direct mail. No other medium offers the creative freedom of direct mail. Mail offers unparalleled flexibility in terms of format - there are practically no size or shape constraints. Yet most direct mail fails to engage the senses and is lost in a sea of white window DL envelopes.

Another key advantage in Direct Marketing is that much of what we do is delivered to individuals. Creatively, this is important because it means we can exploit the power of personalisation and individualism. Give almost anyone a page of text that includes their own name and they will be quickly drawn to that name. While we might not all physically love ourselves, we all love to see or hear our name and about ourselves – it’s logical because it means we’re noticed and cared about. In a world dominated by commodotisation, it’s nice to know you are an individual (or an individual business). Creatively this can be exploited simply by using the available customer data, repeating what you know about each recipient and tying that to your message.

Other ways to make your message stand out include using humour and testimonials. Humour can be used to entertain your recipient, ensuring they are engaged and taken
through the journey. Customer testimonials provide an impartial view and are more believable than you talking about yourself.

For business-to-business communications, using multiple contacts within the organization is a proven performer. You can send variations of a message to each contact but you should always let the other know who else within the organization has received your message. This encourages internal discussions and a more thorough digestion of your message – simply because the recipient thinks they will be asked about this by others.

Last but certainly not least is the call to action. It needs to be clear to the recipient exactly what you want them to do. Tell them straight and simply. Make it easy for them to respond and they will. And from a creative perspective, don’t just tack the response on to the message and expect it to work. Seed it through the creative message and make it part of your proposition. And of course, tie it to your offer – you need to get them to not just feel good with your message but to actually get up and do something!

7. Follow up.

Consumers today are constantly pressured for their time; they are confronted with more messages and choices that ever before. These demands impact consumer behaviours and Direct Marketers must respond in order to both satisfy their customers and create actionable customer behaviours.

Significantly, the days of a single coupon mailing driving 40% response rates are a thing of the past – the increasing volume of communications have made customers less responsive. To drive out a response it seems we often need to hit the customer more than once. In modern Direct Marketing it is rare to simply rely on one contact and medium to finish the job. Combinations of mail, email, SMS, telemarketing and sales force activity have become normalised and with good reason – it works!
Telemarketing is something Direct Marketers have developed a love-hate relationship with. It is a highly responsive medium but conversely it is expensive and irritable to some consumers. Before engaging with a telemarketing campaign we therefore need to think about how to best use this medium.

Sales force and telemarketing activity may well be the ultimate follow up device. Customers are far more accepting of their telephones ringing off the back of a separate marketing approach (direct mail or email) than they are to a stand-alone cold call. And from a Direct Marketers perspective using telemarketing as a follow up not only reduces customer annoyance, it also limits the cost of the telemarketing. If the customer already understands the offer, the telemarketer’s job requires less explanation involving less time and therefore reducing the cost. The key to achieving this result is a stunning creative execution in the first instance (see Point 6).
Traditional follow up devices are also warranted, perhaps in advance of a phone call. Specifically, email or direct mail follow up can drive significant uplift in response, especially when used in tandem with a time-bound offer. The rule of thumb says you will receive 50% of your original responses when you follow up your non-responders. The follow up rule seems to work almost to the percentage point every time. You can apply this rule and based upon results and quickly business-case which customers groups warrant the second contact.

Lastly, when following up (or as a general response option), offer a secondary or fall- back response option. If the customer isn’t ready to commit yet, ask them if they would like more information, to subscribe to an email service or to see a product demonstration. Try to get everyone to respond in some shape or form. The resulting information will arm you with clues for your ongoing sales and marketing efforts. Ideally get everyone to respond and in doing so understand each individual’s barriers to driving a positive response. You may be able to tailor another communication based on what the customer has told you.

8. Measure everything.

Your ‘toe in the water’ test campaign will tell you if you’ve got a winning strategy – without risking it all in one large-scale rollout. Importantly, you can also improve your ongoing response by testing variables such as your target audience, your offer, the mix of communications (follow up mechanics) or the creative format.

Measuring everything will enable you to get to an optimal campaign position much faster. Traditional direct marketing founded itself on split or A/B testing. This is where one group of customers is tested against another – the first group may get a different offer or a different creative execution to the later. In all instances, the executions are the same with the exception of just one variable. The best performing group from the test becomes the control. As the campaign is rolled out this is challenged by new theories that are executed as tests may overtake the control and thus lead to incremental improvements.

While split testing is still immensely valuable, technology driven improvements such as digital printing, online marketing and powerful analysis tools have made it possible to study multiple variables at once. Digital printing and online production allows us to cost effectively create multiple versions of an execution whilst experimental marketing (also termed experimental design) allows us to harvest and analyse several variables in one test. Analysis of experimental marketing results will illustrate the impact of each variable, allowing you to get to an optimal campaign position much faster and at reduced cost.

To illustrate experimental marketing, if there is a requirement to test two offers, three list sources and two creative approaches it would typically necessitate using twelve separate cell tests (2 x 3 x 2 = 12). Experimental marketing allows us to test these collectively in just one experiment. The value of each variable determined from the combined results analysis – that is the value of the list source would be derived from results across both creative executions and offers.

Market research is also a valid measurement tool but is declining in popularity due to the ease that we can create and measure tests. Tests are considered more accurate because people behave differently in research than in a live market situation. In research consumers will typically understate the price they might be prepared to pay for a product. Likewise, group behaviours and dynamics may influence qualitative groups.
When measuring campaign effectiveness it’s important to consider more than the initial response. By tracking ongoing customer behaviours it’s possible to ascertain the full impact of a communication. At a basic level it is wise to measure the conversion rate to ensure your campaign activity isn’t driving ‘tyre kickers’. Likewise, you don’t want to encourage high attrition customers – those that take your offer, but fail to ‘stick’. To add complexity, it is valuable to observe relationships between a communication and
downstream customer behaviours. By monitoring the impact on lifetime value you can begin to understand the ‘brand impact’ of your direct communication.

9. Get time on your side.

Timing is a critical part of the Direct Marketing puzzle. We need to drive an action which means we need to get them to do something – to act now! This is where Direct Marketing differs from traditional brand activity. It isn’t simply enough to build an emotional bond with the customer, to engage with them and make them believe your claims. Engagement then needs to be converted into action which means presenting a compelling offer and a clear response mechanism.

Time bound offers never fail to drive action and are a proven sales technique. Presenting a time bound offer (also termed expiry offer) plays on the human ‘best deal’ psyche. If the audience is somewhat interested in your product or service, they can be spurred into action with the promise of a better deal now. People have a habit of not getting around to doing things – they are simply to busy. But when presented with some value-add for doing it immediately, they can be forced into action. When presenting a time-bound offer it is important to consider the timeframe. Make it too long and it won’t have the desired effect; your audience won’t be jolted into immediate action. Conversely, make it too short and your audience may think the timeframe is unreasonable.

Another consideration on timing is managing the response. If you have a contact centre or website to accept responses, it is important they are setup to take the resulting responses or load. Of course, your test campaign will allow you to forecast the response requirement. To further manage this it may be beneficial to stagger distribution of your communications over a period of time. This allows you to approach different geographic or different audience profiles at discrete times and eliminate campaign bottlenecks.

The most relevant and engaging way to get time on your side is to construct your communication in synch with customer actions and behaviours. Most advertisers bring a ‘campaign mentality’ to Direct Marketing whreby all customers receive communications at the same time. Relevance is more easily created with triggered messages driven by customer behaviour. The best customer service messages hit customers at the right time in their relationship. Direct Marketers are acutely aware of this and explore database activities that promote a new product or service while also delivering a service message to customers.

10. Word of mouth.

Exploiting word of mouth advertising is a technique that is growing in both prominence and effectiveness. As we are exposed to (and confused by) large amounts of advertising and information, we have become cynical and don’t know what to believe and trust. So it’s natural that we turn to people we know and trust for advice, namely our friends, families and work colleagues.

Using existing customers as virtual salespeople is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Even prospects can be powerful advocates if they are impressed by your offer and approach. Anyone who has read the Tipping Point will understand the law of the few, a notion that exceptional people are capable of starting epidemics, all you have to do is find them. With an epidemic, a tiny majority of the people do the work. This is something that naturally fits into the Direct Marketers toolkit, let me explain how.

Most importantly, if you are going to encourage customer advocacy and chatter, be sure those customers have good things to say! If a customer is annoyed with your service and encouraged to talk to others, you can be rest assured they won’t have great things to say. They will do irrevocable damage to your brand. So, as is the case with all Direct Marketing, targeting is key. You need to find out who your satisfied customers are. Customer satisfaction surveys are a great place to start – you can use the data captured to carefully hand-pick the customers you make offers to.

Furthermore, you can determine who the active influencers are from within your customer base just by measuring the effect of word of mouth campaigns. For instance, if you conduct a viral email campaign, you can measure the successful referrals and the source of those. Understanding the source of your success will tell you where the law of the few exists for you.

Your law of the few can manifest itself as a key customer segment for more upscale communications and pre-launch activity for enhanced product and services. Since we know these people naturally spread the word in an influecncial way, we are simply putting them to work for your business benefit. Subtle methods of word of mouth marketing can be applied. By ensuring they receive stunning Direct Marketing executions. These people will talk without incentive or precise instructions.

Tactically word of mouth activity is most often driven by mate get mate campaign activity (friend get friend for non-Australians), viral marketing or referral promotions. This is where we actively instruct and give customers (or prospects) the tools to pass-on messages. Examples of this are incentives for signing up a new customer, viral marketing facilities encouraging input of your friends email addresses or pass-on discount cards which are often seen as part of loyalty clubs or programmes.

11. Remember the brand

This paper wouldn’t be complete without paying homage to the brand. I have discussed the need to create the right brand expressions but it is a point worth reiterating on its own.

My comments on brand should not be viewed as a contradiction to any of my earlier observations. As is the case with all marketing activities, balance needs to be found within the communications. It would be simply wrong for brands to follow all of the listed methods to create immediate response if it creates longer term brand damage. The brand is the most important business asset – it is what differentiates two offerings where the rational product or service benefits have parity.

Direct Marketers need to work with their brand; they should build the brand at the same time as creating actionable results. Direct Marketing is an important fibre to integrate into your brand communications mix – it just happens to also drive actionable results.

A common misconception is that the impact of the brand can’t be measured and traditional marketers often avoid measuring campaign return on investment, claiming their impact is beyond measurement. Yet brand marketing is measurable, in terms of not only the new customers it brings in but also retention and advocacy of loyal customers. It has a measurable multiplier effect in terms of Direct Marketing effectiveness.

Direct Marketing tactics should build the brand relationship. Offers that are tied to the brand campaign help. Pepsi offer a good demonstration of this in action. In their New Generation advertising campaign, Pepsi used rock stars including Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. They used concert tickets and limited edition CD’s as incentives in their promotional activities. By linking the offer to the branded activity, the Direct Marketing better knotted to the brand and therefore leveraged it for greater success.

What is most important to consider is that a brand is not a template or a design. It’s an attitude which can be expressed uniquely in direct communications. Attempts to integrate advertising by adopting a template fail to explore the possibilities of the Direct Marketing media. Better brands are built by articulating the brand attitude in the most creative way for each medium.

Traditional, mass-media brand advertising is critical to build awareness, foster emotional connections, and establish perceptions of your brand’s offering and value. Direct Marketing is the finish, the persuasion tactic that guides people to action where users need incentive to take action and choose you over competitors. It is clearly easier to find success when conducting Direct Marketing activity off the back of a brand; both the branding and Direct Marketing build success. Above all else, remember the brand is the Direct Marketer’s best friend. Clear integration with a strong brand campaign delivers a better result.

Clint Bratton is the Managing Director of Plus Marketing. He has a long and established heritage in Direct Marketing in both New Zealand and Australia, he can be contacted in Sydney on +61 2 9043 2991 or via www.plusmarketing.com.au

Michael Griffith asks: Are YOU getting the best from your mailhouse ?

One wonders if it’s actually possible to have a symbiotic relationship given the raised eyebrows and screwed up faces when ever one mentions the word mailhouse.

Generally there is an undertone of tension between client/agency and the mailhouse.  Why is this so, cause it sets up a culture of blame?  Hence when things go wrong the first thing that happens is everyone points the finger and blames each other.

Let’s be honest things do go wrong from time to time (it’s called being human) and not always is the mailhouse to blame, although as they are the last link in the chain it’s easy to blame them.  Come on somebody has to take the fall !

In my 10+ year tenure in the mailhouse industry I’ve seen some “interesting” mistakes, frequently they are created by the client and signed off by all, yet in the hurly burly of getting the mail pack out on time things are overlooked.  By all parties.

So, doesn’t it make sense that your mailhouse is seen as and allowed to act as a partner in the process as opposed to being just a supplier.

Over the years I’ve established internal processes and structures that are client focused as opposed to being all about what we need.   Layered over this is a commitment to build solid, lasting relationships with our clients.  Relationships where clients trust us completely and almost expect us to come back with suggestions and comments.  In fact at all stages of the process no matter how
close to lodging if any of our team spots something that doesn’t look right, we raise this with our client.

It’s about a partnership as opposed to ‘we’re right you’re wrong’ type mentality.

So, if you’re not treating your mailhouse as a partner just maybe you should try and see what happens.  Success doesn’t happen overnight, give it a couple of go’s before judging the result.

Michael is General Manager of Marketing Impact and is passionate about getting comms to humm…..

Richard Penny wonders: why are B2B marketers slow to jump on the Social Media bandwagon?

As B2C marketers are all in a lather about Twitter, Facebook and the marketing revolution that is Social Media, us B2Ber’s have been much less quick to wade in.

Are we an inherently conservative bunch, are we scared, or are we just waiting till we’ve worked out how to use it properly?

Perhaps for many of us it is a combination of all three, but as long as our target audience remain predominantly aged between 30 and 60, the best Facebook page in the world can only make so much difference…

After all…”if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

There is no doubt Social Media’s time in B2B will come, but it will certainly take a little longer and it might just look a little different.

Daniel Flamberg offers his thoughts on this in his latest blog on imediaconnection.com http://bit.ly/7SZuUU

Can direct agencies really come up with the ‘big idea’? Top UK industry leaders gather to discuss

Ten years ago, the notion that direct marketing would be commanding the respect of its advertising counterparts was about as unlikely as a black US presidential candidate getting elected.

How times change.

In the year that Barack Obama was sworn into the White House, could the world of advertising finally be ready to embrace as an equal the discipline that it once thought of as its embarrassing and slightly grubby cousin?

As the UK creeps through the worst recession since World War II, in which marketing budgets are being slashed indiscriminately across all media, agencies are emerging leaner and more focused, filled with only the most motivated and talented individuals.

These staff are being stretched to produce their very best work for clients, who are themselves having to justify every penny of spend.

Meanwhile, digital has shot up the agenda because of its ability to engage with hard-to-reach, younger audiences, to deliver fast-turnaround, affordable results and to forge direct and interactive relationships with consumers.

So, as the emphasis of marketing shifts towards a greater need for accountability and results, it is hardly surprising that when direct marketers got together for Campaign’s Direct Roundtable discussion, there was a new-found sense of confidence among them.

The suggestion was that the recession has brought about the end of an era of inequality and prejudice and that DM’s image as the dirty end of advertising is fast getting cleaned up.

Annette King, the chief executive of OgilvyOne London, believes that one of the effects of the recession is that as agencies have cut back, so staff have had to be open to a more varied workload.

“People had become so specialist, particularly in the digital space, but it ended up that you needed such an army of them to get anything done. Now it turns out that people can turn their hands to lots of things,” she says.

As Derek Holder, the managing director of the Institute of Direct Marketing, points out, a certain level of
restructuring and cost-cutting at the beginning of any recession is normal. But the general feeling around the table is that, this time, something is fundamentally different.

Christoph Becker, the chief creative officer of GyroHSR, says that the way agencies are structured has changed.

A broader base of staff from varying backgrounds means agencies from any discipline are capable of coming up with the creative idea: “In the past, there was advertising apartheid, but that has gone. DM shops used to just adapt from the brand idea, but it goes in both directions now. Clients don’t have the luxury to operate like that anymore.

“If they do, then it is because agencies have put themselves in that position. Smart clients are not acting like that anymore and nor are smart agencies,” he says.

If Becker is right, the Campaign editor, Claire Beale, says, does that mean a DM shop can come up with an idea such as Fallon’s gorilla for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk?

Gavin Wheeler, the chief executive of WDMP, argues that the definition of creativity has changed.

While DM agencies should be capable of coming up with gorilla, it’s not necessarily what they are good at. Nor, perhaps, is it what’s needed from them as we come out of a recession with a new focus on results.

“We have a different job to do now,” Wheeler says. “We did a lot of press ads for the Aviva relaunch. They might not have been as pretty as Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO’s, but they generated a response.”

King believes that being charged to create an advertising idea like gorilla doesn’t play to a direct agency’s strengths.

“We’d have been tempted to put a phone number or URL on it,” she admits, adding, however, that a direct agency would have done more to adapt the TV ad for the web and make it more effective.

“With ‘gorilla’, they took the ad and just put it online,” she says. “They didn’t take the idea and change the language for the appropriate environment, which was a shame because it was such genius.”

Mel Cruickshank, the managing director of Lida, believes a different type of creativity is required for different tasks. “A website and how to interact with it is an idea in itself and the idea comes from how you put that site together and the navigation of it.

“It’s not about having an idea on the landing page; the idea is that site. That’s a different type of creativity to ‘gorilla’ but just as key.

For a long time, the direct sector has talked about how digital is the ultimate tool in customer communications, but there has been little evidence of agencies and advertisers making the best use of it.

This is changing, according to King.

“The direct industry at large has got digital more licked than the advertising industry at large,” she says.

“We have worked out how to make money out of it while the ad industry is generally still struggling with that. I’m sure they’ll work it out, but they haven’t done so yet.”

The traditionally unglamorous area of data has risen in the credibility stakes because of its use in online activity, behavioural insight and targeting. Sue MacLure, the head of eCRM at EHS Brann, says: “The data person is no longer sat in the corner of the room and told under no circumstances to talk to anyone.”

Mike Cullis, the managing partner at Elvis, reveals that the sister Cossette-owned agency Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy often asks for Elvis’ head of data planning to attend meetings because of the insight he brings.

Digital also brings DM benefits when it comes to graduate recruitment. The direct sector can find itself down the pecking order when graduates are choosing where to join the ad industry, but, according to Holder, digital’s central position in DM is helping it prove more attractive in the beauty parade.

The IDM and the IPA run summer schools for graduates and students to educate them about DM and give them the opportunity to gain experience in agencies.

“It’s [about] changing that awareness at the universities, and it will come, because digital is the sexy part of the business and that’s what they want to enter,” Holder says.

“And it’s the accountability of direct marketing, such as research and data that you can actually apply in the real world, that they’re really fascinated by.”

It is not only the adoption of digital that has been accelerated by the recession, however.

According to Wheeler, strategy has also raced up the agenda in direct agencies, as clients recognise the importance of idea generation and because some are taking production in-house. As a result, Wheeler says, agencies are investing in their strategy departments instead of studios.

Cullis says clients want all their different agencies to challenge each other with ideas, create a collective
answer to their business problems and work with each other to achieve the most effective strategy.

An issue this raises is how budgets are divided between agencies - do they work it out for themselves or are clients still operating with separate budgets for different channels?

In most cases, a client’s agencies are on separate retainers and have to work out between them how best to spend the marketing budget.

This collaboration is extended as far as media agencies working with direct agencies to determine how much will be spent on eCRM and what it will deliver.

However, there’s still a feeling that media agencies will safeguard a chunk of a client’s budget to spend on above-the-line channels because it knows what they will deliver for a brand.

Sometimes media allocations can be too dependent on traditional advertising and hold clients back from making the most of digital opportunities, according to King. But, increasingly, collaboration and equality between disciplines is becoming more common, Cullis says.

“We work with a couple of Virgin brands and we are expected to work with the media agency Manning
Gottlieb OMD to figure out how to hit the ROI target and deliver share holder value, right down to how much eCRM is going to deliver. It’s down to culture,” he adds.

It’s not only reduced budgets that are forcing agencies to work more closely together. Advances in tech nology such as mobile (which King describes as “a dream come true - in my pocket”) demand greater understanding and, therefore, investment.

One way to spread that cost, particularly if you’re in a group, is to share it with subsidiary agencies.

Cruickshank explains that Lida and its sister ad agency M&C Saatchi share the cost of specialists in areas such as mobile.

“As well as saving money, it delivers better results,” she says. “We have one central strategy unit where everybody from each of the different agencies sits and it works. You get the benefit of a planning director who is able to bounce things off a pure brand planner and a direct planner and an information architect. But everyone has a distinct role.”

MacLure agrees: “The sort of person you are fits into the sort of specialism you have. Data people come at it from one viewpoint and digital people from another. You learn from each other but you work together.”

The discussion then turned to the perennial issue of DM’s image and whether the sector needs to change its name. The general consensus was that the name is fine, because it represents what it is - direct marketing across all channels - but that the meaning needs rede fining.

The old association with mass-market, untargeted direct mail has been difficult to shake but, with the divides coming down between disciplines, it is less of a problem.

“What has to change is how you approach the business,” Becker says. “Any discipline could be the door to anything. That’s what’s changing. It’s a positioning problem rather than a name problem.”

The idea of clients giving agencies an equal shot at coming up with creative ideas and encouraging greater collaboration provides tangible evidence of a new level of respect and recognition for DM’s strengths.

But, Beale asks, is there a danger that clients might question whether they need separate agencies and move all their business into one?

Wheeler suggests that agencies still have differences, but they are no longer segregated by above and below the line, but by those who focus on creativity and those who focus on data and what it enables.

King takes this further, believing the differentiator is actually who owns the customer and who owns the brand.

“We work with Bartle Bogle Hegarty on British Airways and Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO on BT. We all work closely together, but they respect that we understand the customer and we respect that they understand the brand, and we wouldn’t dream of questioning that.

“But if you have one without the other, then you’re in dangerous territory”, she says.

If ownership of the customer versus the brand really is the difference between advertising and direct marketing, could the customer’s growing power really mean an end to advertising apartheid?

It would certainly be an unexpected side-effect of the global financial crisis, but it’s not impossible.

Dramatising the power of adding Direct Mail to Digital. Add a dimension - Proximity London Royal Mail.

Background
Many marketers have been moving budget from Direct Mail into digital media because online is cost-effective, flexible and effective. But exciting research from Royal Mail has shown how much more effective digital can be when it is used in tandem with mail. In fact, ROI can increase by as much as 62%. 

Idea
The brief was to dramatise the power of adding Direct Mail to Digital. So, if Digital is one facet of marketing communications and Direct Mail is another, when they come together they create a third, powerful dimension – a significant increase in campaign results. 
3,000 marketers were mailed a simple DM pack containing nothing more than a pair of 3D glasses printed with their own personlised URL. 
This took them to a website where they were greeted by name before they viewed a beautiful 3D film. Even the soundtrack was engineered with innovative recording technology to provide a 3D audio experience. 

(Have a look at http://directory.add-a-dimension.co.uk) 

At the end of the film, the website introduced four simple, key ways that using Direct Mail with Digital could help – 1, By driving online purchase. 2, By helping marketers learn more about their customers. 3, By sharing information about their products and services. 4, By creating a better brand experience. 
Each area was supported with a vox pop video, a case study and statistic. They were taken to a simple form to make contact with Royal Mail, to find out more. 
Along with sales collateral – brochures and presentations that included 3D graphics and support – the target audience was also sent a limited edition 3D print from the film, together with a summary of what they’d found interesting online. 

Results
14% response rate within one week

Wayne Picks view on creativity in New Zeland Direct Marketing

Matt Scott thinks it’s worth taking the time to tell a good story.

With data becoming the new cool, there has never been a more important time to make its interpretation as useful as possible. As a self proclaimed chart perfectionist at the agency, nothing concerns me more than the need for endless PowerPoint, when a well thought through design, using key insights can get the point across in a compelling and engaging way in a fraction of the time.

Okay, so my pulse does rise when the new version of Wired gets delivered and I get to admire the simplicity of conveying a global issue on two pages without endless copy…But when I came across the blog by David McCandless it was great to see someone dedicating themselves to the cause in everyday working environments where data is required and interpreted.

As an “independent visual and data journalist” (and proclaimed pie-chart hater; let’s hope he doesn’t mind Venn diagrams) he certainly makes a convincing case with his clever site, Information is Beautiful.

The “Billion Dollar Gram” chart. This eye-opener compares billion-dollar budgets—comparisons of, say, the estimated total amount that will be spent on the Iraq war ($3 trillion) and the cost to feed and educate every child on earth ($465 billion). “I’m interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath,” writes McCandless. “Or, failing that, it can just look cool!”

I guess we just all need to take the time to think things through a tad more before we rush to PowerPoint…as Oscar Wilde once said “I’m sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

Matt Scott - DraftFCB