So often marketers take an either-or approach to marketing channels. Either email or direct mail, either PPC or traditional print ads, either Html or text, either facebook or youtube, you get the point.

The innovative marketers (like yourself), know marketing channels work best when they’re integrated.

The guys at Marketing Sherpa recently posted a campaign case study for a minor league baseball team that were trying to sell tickets to a playoff game. They used email marketing first with a text email message and then with a well-designed HTML message.

They got a tremendous 56.9% conversion from those who visited the static landing page.

The lesson - don’t be fixed on what you think works. Explore new marketing channels and new ways of using old marketing channels to get phenomenal campaign success.

Related posts:

The great email divide

Multi-channel + Interaction = Conversion

It’s all about the channel (Contains IQ Question)

Lifting the lid on 1:1 campaigns

Ever watched an ant trail? After a close examination, most people would probably agree that it is one of the most efficient systems in the world. Despite its efficiency, the slightest disruption will paralyze all efforts. Think of what happens when an ant trail approaches an unexpected crack on the sidewalk or if a leaf falls in the middle of it. Efficiency immediately evolves into chaos and all efforts made will yield no results.

Ever wondered why some of your best marketing efforts did not achieve desired results? Basically, what you thought was the best marketing initiative was just an ant trail that got disrupted by a leaf or a crack on the sidewalk. There was an objective, a plan and an investment of sufficient resources, but there was propably no effort made to anticipate disruptions and a reaction plan. This is why we marketers should value the importance of a follow up plan and make it a part of every marketing initiative.

If the content appears to be too abstract, here is an example to better illustrate my point. With a newly purchased car, I was in the market for modification parts or anything that will put an extra shine on it. About two months ago, while going through my messages in my Outlook inbox, I received an email from Acura promoting OEM parts in my gmail account. At the point of contact I was excited to see what Acura has to offer, but I also had to finish replying to several important messages in Outlook. I saved the message and intended to return to it later that day. As I was finishing up replying to the never ending list of messages, I was summoned to a meeting by my boss, received a couple of phone calls, and got several RSS alerts. I forgot about the offer message from Acura after a series of distractions. I did not recall the message until just now, as I am writing this blog post.

Acura had a plan of targeting all new car owners and the message was appealing to their target, but there was no follow up plan. It has been over two months now and I, as a consumer, am not as excited or motivated to install modification parts on my car. As consumers, we occasionally experience sudden urges to make a purchase that we later realize we can live without. Acura did not anticipate the disruption, a series of distractions, as a barrier to their initiative. If I had received a follow up email shortly after receiving the first offer message, I would probably have some new rims on my new car by now.

Disruptions can be costly to marketing efforts and cannot always be anticipated. Fortunately, unlike ants, we marketers can learn from mistakes and past experiences. We may be startled by a leaf in our path the first time, but we should have a plan of going around it the next time we encounter it. Until we make an effort to anticipate disruptions and have a follow up plan in place. we will not be able to prevent our efforts from falling into cracks it may come upon.

Disruptions will and can occur in any part of your marketing cycle. Check out these links for more insights on follow up marketing initiatives:

Customer service, Customer Relations, & Networking

Just something to think about…

The biggest mistake marketers make with email campaigns is sending too much too often. “They’re cheap, so let’s blanket our prospects with our emails”. This might have worked before, but your prospects can easily protect themselves from this now.

Campaign success doesn’t only depend on email open rates, open rates won’t get you the sale. Instead you should be sending information only when you have something new to say, something big to announce, a good offer to make.

Move away from the mass marketing approach. Segment your prospects and customers into groups according to metrics like how much they like your product, (e.g. Apple fanatics get more product updates than the average ipod user) and how often they buy (borders customers that purchase once a week get offers more often).

Each business/ campaign will have an optimum campaign schedule that works. To get you started with yours, try sending out 2 emails between expected purchase dates, adjusted as the length of time increases. If your customers buy every week, send them 2 offers a week. If purchases are a yearly affair divide your campaigns into bi-monthly campaigns.

Make sure you vary your campaigns. Send them an email linked to a personal url, follow up with a direct mail piece then a call from your sales staff, send a letter thanking them for taking the time for the call, include a better offer in that letter… The methods of reaching your customers are endless, don’t abandon other channels because you think emails are cheaper.

Remember your marketing campaign goal should always be to get better response that lead to a sale not keeping campaign costs down!

Sending yourself numerous proofs of an email campaign before it goes out is absolutely crucial. Here’s 8 mistakes (in order of how badly it can affect your response) to make sure you avoid in your email.

1. Links that are unclickable/ missing

2. Use of Spam words in the email body

3. No company address/ way to opt-out (Non-compliance with CAN-SPAM)

4. Use of unmanned “Do not reply” email addresses (Why bother to send an email that people cannot respond to?)

5. No campaign offer ( Why should they respond? )

6. Content in email and personal url does not match ( No one likes to be tricked!)

7. Incompatibility with Mozilla/ other browsers (depends on the disparity)

8. Spelling errors ( Note: Some take it more seriously than others!)