Better response for marketing campaigns!

Holidays are a great way to get ahead.

To get ahead of your work, get ahead of the game, take a step back and think about where your marketing is going/ where your business is going, while spending more quality time with the people you love.

This year has been a really turbulent year for marketing. The economy resulted in slashed budgets, more cost-consciousness (see ‘death of direct mail‘), less time for ‘real marketing’ more time on social networks, lower consumer spending has meant lower campaign ROI and ultimately a lot of jobs lost).

So if anything, this weekend is a good time to take a step back, get a view from 15,000 feet and re-learn marketing if necessary.

Here’s how:

#1 Sign up for these feeds:

Network for Good (Learn best practices in non-profit marketing)

BtoB magazine (Because B2B requires different strategies)

Chris Brogan (Social Media Business Strategy)

Hoovers (Marketing with a perspective on data)

DPS Magazine (Keep ahead of what’s next in print)

American Printer (The latest printing news)

#2 Pick up a great marketing book and devour it this weekend

#3 Watch these videos we compiled for you on youtube.

#1 Use different channels.

Lots of celebrities make money from different channels. From showbiz to sports, the key to making a fortune is multiple streams of income. Tiger woods is a fine example of this; he’s made over $25 million in prize money. Not a lot? Together with off-course earnings, he’s made almost $1 bil. Currently ($97,919,714).

For marketers, the core statistic is probably response rates and ROI, but the method is the same. Use different channels including email, direct mail, personalized web-pages, social media, print, traditional media,… to achieve your goal. The better you get each channel to complement each other, the more success you will enjoy.

#2 Prepare for the unexpected.

Wimbledon fans will remember the longest final in history just a year ago between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Many tennis fans call that match the greatest in history, but it required that both players were prepared for the unexpected and were physically and mentally in shape.

Are you prepared for the unexpected with your marketing campaigns? Do you have the tools to understand the underlying dynamics behind your campaign statistics. Is a new marketing segment beginning to respond to you, are your competitors imitating your campaigns, do you need to change your approach.

#3 Bad publicity is still publicity

(Just ask Paris Hilton)

If you’re reading this, it is likely that you won’t have to deal with bad publicity often. Frankly you almost wish you had some bad publicity to deal with. This point is still important to you as a marketer.

You still have to deal with negative sentiments towards your campaign. If you’re mass marketing the same campaign to the same list regularly. Chances are you are damaging your brand and making your recipients less receptive to what you have to say.

Learn from Paris, take a bad and use it for your benefit. Use the opportunity to rebrand your company/ marketing campaigns and turn negative sentiments around. (Of course not everyone will be convinced, remove them from your list! )

#4 What do people remember you for?

Take a page out of Donald Trump’s play book. When you hear the name Trump, you associate it with perfection.

What do your recipients associate your brand with? Humourous campaigns, long boring text, spam? Make sure you control how people view your brand and keep to it. Marketing success often comes with repetition.

#5 It’s all about the campaign

On her current concert tour, Lady GAGA very boldly tells her fans that for her, it is all about the music, not the money. This refreshing approach to music is however the reason for her success.

Similarly, by focusing your campaigns on the recipient’s experience, making the conversation about them (not about you or your brand), then campaign success will follow. Make sure the campaign tools you have in your arsenal: design, messaging, campaign offers, marketing channels… work to this purpose.

#6 Practice, Practice, Practice (or Test, Test, Test)

Only 1 player in the recent history of the NBA has the ability to unite the world around a sport. Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest player in the history of the NBA, often attributes his success to his focus on training.

Similarly, marketers need to constantly hone their skills and test each campaign. Will a simple change in email subject line improve responses? What about a new offer, a new marketing channel, a new way to use social media, a new presentation style, a new sales pitch…

Make sure you are constantly testing, the marketing landscape changes quickly, what works today may not work tomorrow.

—> In remembrance of another MJ

Your customers and prospects are social. They like interacting with brands online. You already do email marketing, you already send direct mail, some of you are already creating effective multichannel marketing campaigns, but do you have the right strategy for going social?

Chris Brogan frequently blogs about social media strategy and how technology can be used to create applications that interacts with the online community. See the Dunkin run demo (below).

Here are some strategy tips from his recent post ‘ you still need a frame‘.

• Discover related blogging community. Begin commenting and building relationships.
• Build branded Twitter and Facebook presence.
• Build off-site blog to connect with the community of prospective users.
• Launch blogger outreach requests. Track affirmatives. Track for posts. Respond to comments.

The social communuty is also a great place to learn from and connect with other brands.

Connect with L2: Youtube | Twitter | Facebook

Often the greatest divides result from the simplest of things. 1 chromosome in your DNA, the continuous flow of a river or whether your prospects enable images in their emails.

Whether you are marketing B2B or B2C this problem is the same, but the solution is very simple.

Send email messages in the right format to everyone on your list.

Personalized marketing is not just about putting the first name, company name, etc in your marketing message. It is also about catering to preferences. Test your response to image-heavy HTML emails, HTML emails using background colors for the design and a simple email text message.

Track who responds to each type and remember those settings for future messages. If you like, have a link in each email message that allows your prospects to specify their preference.

Here’s this email divide in action:

Email: Text Version

Email: HTML

If you asked me which format is better for your messages? I wouldn’t know. (It’s not called the great email divide for nothing. )

But if you know which customer segments are more visual, how they have been responding to your image-laden html messages or if you just asked them. The choice is clear for you.

Every message you send out, you’ll be sending email messages that give you a better response.

Will some people still label you a spammer? Probably.

Will you get better response with targeted email structure and design styles? Definitely.

Related posts:

Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Email benchmarking guide:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/exs/Email09Excerpt.pdf

Converting email with images blocked:
http://www.betterresponseblog.com/index.php/marketing/converting-email-with-blocked-images/

I recently attended Ad:Tech Singapore, mainly to get a feel of the general sentiment in the marketing community in Asia.

I have to say, much of the sentiment is the same. The main focus is still the dollars and cents; basically measuring the performance of various marketing mediums, finding cheaper/better ways to reach the user/customer and providing better value to the user.

A lot of talk was on digital marketing, and how it has to be connected with traditional media and social media on both ends of the spectrum.

In terms of marketing technology of the future, mobile seems to be standing out from the rest (although I still have my qualms about mobile’s unique ability to more deeply invade and distract the user and in some cases make them pay for it.

Incidently, Yahoo now has mobile advertising. See http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/mobile/

Video-on-demand seems to be another big innovation (especially with large content publishers and television networks).

One of the main differences in Asia (apart from the less mature markets) is the distribution of online spend. As far of marketing budgets go, the online budget is almost about 1%, much less than the (>20%) average in US and Europe.

I heard the same complains from online advertising companies that 30% of your customers are online so shouldn’t 30% of your budget be allocated to online mediums. I still disagree with this thought process.

Simply because online marketing (when done right) provides a better ROI than a print ad in a popular publication/ tradeshows and especially TV ads. So while I agree that online budgets should increase, I do so for an entirely different reason, they work!

In the words of one of the panelist from Yahoo. Online marketing flattens the marketing ‘ecosystem‘ - your prospects go from awareness to retention to acquistion almost immediately.

L2 has one of the most popular whitepapers

According to the DMA, L2 has the second most popular whitepaper on the DMA’s website.

L2’s whitepaper, ‘8 Tips for Selling a Direct Marketing Campaign‘ is even more relevant today then it was when it was written a year ago.

The 8 tips were written to help marketers and marketing service providers sell that initial direct marketing campaign and convince colleagues/ bosses/ or sometimes themselves of the effectiveness of direct marketing campaigns.

If you have yet to adopt 1to1, personalized and targeted marketing campaigns, then these 8 tips are for you.

Tip 1: Help them understand the motivation for direct marketing campaigns
Tip 2: Help align their expectations
Tip 3: Sell the approach of work less, earn more
Tip 4: No, or little, software to learn
Tip 5: Work with their existing media
Tip 6: Use past success stories to help them visualize their own success
Tip 7: Give them the tools to help sell their customers
Tip 8: Don’t stop at the ’sale’

Download the whitepaper: “8 Tips for Selling a Direct Marketing Campaign“

“A cowboy rode into town on friday and left 3 days later on friday. How did he do it?”

I assure you the quiz question is relevant and it all has to do with the channel. It’s the same in marketing!

Elizabeth Gooding, the Digital Nirvana, recently discussed personalized URLs and how it should be used in conjunction with email and direct mail.

We’ve been touting the same message almost all year but we’re finding that the channels you use to reach your customers and how you put them together are becoming more important this year. Especially when more than ever, marketers need to show results and find a way to get the same response at less cost.

In her article, Elizabeth quotes a statistic provided by podi.org which indicates that

“Relevant campaigns generate, on average, 300% better response than those that are simply personalized”

Now imagine what that boost in response will be if it is personalized, relevant and continuous.

You may have a great campaign idea for a direct mail piece, complemented by a purl, but it is not enough until you have a plan for a multi-touch campaign. This means involving everything from email, purl, direct mail, reminder emails, sales calls, maybe even SMS that continues the two-way conversation between your brand and your customers.

Yes it may look more expensive adopting this multi-channel process, but remember when you have a way to track response down to the individual, you will be able to make sure you spend 80% of your budget on the 20% of customers that give you the most business!

For more on the multi-channel process. View this video about “Climbing the Multi-Channel Mountain (without falling off!)” to see how you can get started!

By the way, the horse’s name was ‘friday’.

According to Inc.com, Software as a Service is one of sixteen industries to be in.

Quoting them directly,

“Although software spending is expected to increase just 5 percent through 2013, the software-as-a-service niche is forecast to expand by nearly 20 percent annually over the same period, as companies continue to see the benefits of on-demand, flexible applications, according to Gartner, a market-research firm.

The industry is expected to produce $8 billion in sales by the end of this year and $16 billion by the end of 2013. The office suites categories will lead the pack this year, increasing 376 percent to $512 million.”

Here’s why you should be working with a SaaS vendor for your communication needs. As we go through this recession, marketers are realizing that marketing as we know it has to change. Consumers are more conscious and as they get distracted by increasing amounts of marketing messages, they are learning to  ignore them.

The key to success then is to stand out from the clutter. For that marketers need to come up with clever ideas, integrate the latest marketing technology and create highly integrated and efficient marketing systems.

To do that, you need to work with a vendor that will help you build that application rather than just one that sells you a software in a box without the support you need to meet these new challenges.

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