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15Feb

Survey: Direct Mail Marketing Remains Relevant In 2017

The past year has been one of uncertainty for many Canadians, as the future of Canada Post has looked shaky at times. However, potential postal strikes and the increases in postage rates have not reduced the effectiveness of direct mail marketing. In fact, recent statistics show that direct mail is as strong a choice as ever for savvy marketers. Study after study shows that direct mail marketing is still a relevant channel to communicate with target consumers across a variety of industries. Here are some of the reasons that direct mail should remain an important part of your marketing mix: Connect with new customers When it comes to attracting new customers, studies show that 39% of consumers try a business for the first time because of direct mail advertising. Direct mail remains a strong tool for businesses looking to increase brand awareness, attract new business and increase sales. Drive new customers online A recent USPS study showed that over 60% of direct mail recipients visited the website that was promoted in the direct mail piece and of this group, first-time customers were the most likely to visit the company online. Drive customers to your store The USPS found that 23% of direct mail recipients visit the sender’s store location and that direct mail recipients purchased 28% more items and spent 28% more than non-direct mail recipients. Catalogues are still popular Although fewer companies mail out product catalogues, almost 60% of online shoppers enjoy receiving catalogues. For retailers selling products online or at a physical store location, a well-timed catalogue mailing is a great way to drive sales. Millennials love direct mail Although most marketers looking to connect with Millennials spend most of their time, effort and budget online; studies show that 92% of young shoppers say that they prefer direct mail for making purchasing decisions. In fact, 66% of Millennials are more likely to remember to use a voucher if they have a physical copy to carry around. To connect with Millennials, it’s important for marketers to follow up on their app or other online offers with a physical voucher via direct mail. Women get the mail Which member of the household you’re sending to is most likely to pick up your direct mail piece? Studies show that 91% of mail is picked up by the same person each day and 80% of these people are women. In fact, 80% of the men and women who pick up the mail for their household are also the primary grocery shoppers, which means that direct mail is an important way for grocery retailers to share product offerings and promotions. Email or Direct Mail? According to MailChimp, the average open rate for email marketing is below 20% (although benchmarks will vary by industry). However, 98% of people check their physical mail every day and 77% of people sort through their physical mail as soon as they get it. The insight marketers can draw here is that they should expect a much greater open rate with direct mail than they will see with their email marketing communications. Source: https://www.drmg.com/2016/11/survey-says-direct-mail-marketing-remains-relevant/
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15Feb

Direct Mail Frequently Asked Questions FAQ’s

Any truly comprehensive modern marketing strategy needs to incorporate direct mail. But what is direct mail exactly, and how does it work? Direct mail marketing is a wide term that is applied to sending a range of marketing materials (including newsletters, sales letters, coupons, brochures, postcards and more) sent through the mail to a targeted group of people.

How does direct mail marketing work?

Your direct mail marketing partner will work with your business to determine the most effective materials to send to a specific group of people. Choosing who receives your direct mail materials is as important as the materials themselves. Thankfully, modern technology and techniques mean that direct mail marketing is more targeted than ever before. Building a targeted and effective mailing list is half the battle. The recipe for direct mail success also includes these important ingredients:
  • A great product
  • Captivating copy
  • Professional graphics
  • A discount that’s too good to resist

Does direct mail marketing work?

Absolutely. If direct mail marketing didn’t work it wouldn’t be so popular, but the best way to answer this question is to throw some questions back at you. Have you ever received direct mail marketing materials? Did you pick them up? Look at them? Decide if you wanted them or not? Even if you decided that you didn’t care about the materials you still took the time to pick them up, hold them, flip through them, and maybe even keep a few.  We are willing to bet that on more than one occasion direct mail even influenced your purchasing decision.

Why does direct mail marketing work?

Direct mail marketing puts your branded materials directly into the homes of people who are statistically most likely to respond positively to them. Unlike annoying pop-up ads, TV ads that people skip through, or a billboard you pass on the highway; direct mail puts a physical object in your potential clients’ homes. They look it over, decide if it is useful and in most cases usually ends up on the counter, table, or fridge for days, weeks or longer as a reminder for them.

Why is direct mail marketing still relevant?

Direct mail has been around for a long time. It outlasted the emergence of radio, television, the Internet, and now social media. Direct mail has survived and thrived for one reason – it works. Believe it or not, today there are still individuals and businesses that are not online (or not online as much as you). This is why even Google, a name synonymous with silicone valley, often uses direct mail to reach new potential clients.

How does direct mail integrate new technology and marketing developments?

Direct mail has evolved with technology. It is now more targeted and integrated with digital media than ever before. Direct mail can be used to redirect people to websites, landing pages, social media accounts, and other digital properties either by posting an address or through the use of a QR code. When a user scans the QR code with their smartphone, it takes them directly to the web address that you designate. Source: https://www.drmg.com/2016/12/faq-about-direct-mail/
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15Feb

Top 3 Elements Of Market Exposure

“Across professional services industries, only a slight majority (54 percent) said marketing and business development activities were strongly coordinated. However, a lack of integration between the two can result in wasted efforts and lost opportunities.”*[1] Business Development focuses on forming partnerships and contacts, with the goal of sales, whereas marketing focuses on creating messaging that will resonate with clients. These two elements need to work cohesively together, to help increase market exposure. DRMG recommends, in all your print and digital marketing tactics, to utilize these 3 key elements:

  1. Two-way Communication

  2. Updated & Current Content

  3. Tracking & Measuring Feedback/Results

Two-way Communication

Successful marketing depends heavily on two-way communication. You want to engage your online audience as much as possible to help increase: engagement, organic search results, and ultimately subscribers. For print marketing, you want to ensure your messaging is intriguing and has a strong call to action. You only have one shot,with a print piece, to catch the attention of potential clientele and drive them to seek out more information. Communicating in a manner that allows for both parties (your business and customers) to exchange information will help build your brand reputation.

Updated & Current Content

Both print and digital marketing campaigns are tools to help your business reach, communicate, and ultimately sell to potential clientele. With multiple factors impacting customers spending habits, it is important that your messaging is current and impactful. For print, you need to make sure your content and design is up-to-date and creative to help your business stand out. When a customer searches your business online, it is important that your website appear on the first page, and the page itself contain updated content; most people searching won’t go past the first or second page of results.

Tracking & Measuring Feedback/Results

Devoting time and money to a marketing campaign is an important investment, and it is equally imperative to measure the performance of each campaign. For both print and digital tactics, tracking feedback gives you a direct insight to how customers respond, not only to your services, but the image your business is communicating. If your results aren’t meeting your expectations, tracking can help you determine what elements need to change.  For performance measurement, an extremely easy method for print is tracking coupons. DRMG recommends that you run your ad more than once to see how effective the ad, and offer, is and then measure and make necessary adjustments.

Patience is not only a virtue, but a key element.

Remember: the way you interact and connect with people, through both print and online marketing, can help expand your market exposure and aid in the growth of followers, leads and customers. Authored by: Robyn Masse (Marketing Services Representative) Edited by: Shelby Roloson (Marketing Services Representative) *[1]- https://hingemarketing.com/blog/story/driving-business-when-business-development-and-marketing-are-in-sync
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15Feb

Tips For Planning 2017 Email Marketing Campaign

The New Year is a new opportunity to learn from your past mistakes, build on your success, and achieve even better direct mail results. Direct mail has been around for a long time but it is constantly evolving. To make the most out of direct mail marketing in 2017, you need to stay up-to-date with the latest developments, best practices, and insider knowledge

Listen to the data

Modern direct mail marketing uses a data-first methodology to target campaigns with pinpoint accuracy. Use your internal customer data, combined with your marketing partner to deliver your direct mail materials to your most important consumers. Data has always been part of the direct mail marketing strategy, but in 2017 there will be more data and more ways of analyzing and interpreting that information than ever before. Make the most of it and reap the rewards of a successful direct mail marketing campaign.

Get personal

More data means greater opportunity to personalize campaigns and increase engagement from recipients. Your potential clients are all unique individuals, and no one likes to be treated like they are just a number. Use your data to create narrow market segments and appeal to them on a personal level.

Test, and then test again

Using A/B testing to compare different mailing materials is one of the most important tools available to direct mail marketers. Tweak your copy, change your graphics, improve or reduce your offer to see which produces the greatest ROI (return on investment). If 5% off gets just as good of a response as 10%, then why deprive your business of that 5% profit? Consider targeting different market segments. Start with one segment and then begin breaking it down. Start creating mailing lists based on a range of demographic and economic factors. Change the time and frequency you send materials. Your direct mail campaigns are vital learning opportunities that should inform future campaigns. You will have more data in 2017, but all that information doesn’t mean anything unless you use it effectively.

Integrate with digital marketing

In 2016, we saw the emergence of omnichannel marketing. It may have a name that screams “fad” but the idea behind it is backed by research. Consumers expect a seamless brand experience across all channels. This means that you need to link your direct mail campaign to your social media campaign, website, and other platforms. Present one seamless brand experience, use graphics, language, tone, and style that all meld together to form one coherent experience. Make accessing your online properties as simple as possible. For example, include an easy to remember URL, Twitter, and Facebook username, or even a QR code to take recipients straight to your website via their smartphones.

Provide real value

Consumers are savvier than ever before. They are constantly bombarded by ads online and in person. To stand out you need to choose your market segment carefully and deliver them real value. This value can come in the form of monetary value with a great offer that they will actually use, exceptional customer service, or by providing them with new, informative, and exciting content. The key is that it should always be relevant. If there is one way to sum up the emerging marketing trends of 2017 it would be: quality over quantity. It’s not how much data you have, but how you use it that’s important. More data is available than ever before, use it effectively to create high-value content directed at your relevant customers. Source: https://www.drmg.com/2016/12/tips-for-planning-your-2017-mail-campaign/
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15Feb

How To Ensure Your Email Campaign Grabs Your Customers’ Attention

In today’s mobile world, email is still one of the most, if not ‘the’ most effective forms of marketing. With the ability to access emails almost anytime and anywhere, marketers have the opportunity to reveal their products to the public on a much larger scale.

However, people can be apathetic towards a large chunk of the sponsored or branded emails they receive. In order to overcome a potential client’s indifference, one must be creative and relevant. New and innovative marketing strategies are needed to combat the public’s immunity to ‘traditional’ email advertisement and to avoid having your efforts tossed aside, joining the online junkyard that is generic email marketing. Standard ‘batch and blast’ emails are now just a nuisance to the customer. Sending these will surely hinder your email marketing, as it will be taken as though you don’t care about your customer, nor the experience that you are trying to offer them. Today, marketers can go further and really push the boundaries. Sending a personalised email can go a long way into resolving this issue. Personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates, and it shows the company cares about the customer, instilling trust and faith in the brand. Email marketing is nothing without an appealing subject line, and tackling this is where marketers have to get creative. Personalising the subject line isn’t the sole solution to achieving email excellence, but it’s certainly going to catch the recipient’s eye. Emails with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Personalisation is proven to smash the benchmarks set for email marketing. The Entertainer, the UKs largest high street toy retailer, recently saw huge increases from their marketing efforts by sending powerful and relevant emails. “We tripled our email revenue last year compared to the year before. It’s not like we have massively grown the database. All we have done is send better messages to the same people and got better results.” Rob Wood, Head of Online, The Entertainer - Source: SmartFocus. True personalisation is being able to bring all of your data together and actually making something of it. To truly personalise your marketing efforts, you need to include everything in your messaging from what time of day it is? What is the weather like? What device the consumer is using? What is the users’ online behaviour like? Bringing all of this (and more) together will show the customer that you do care about them, which is key to ensuring customer retention. Location, location, location! This segment of data needs to be utilised in order to keep the message relevant and to access true personalisation. Context is key in today’s competitive corporate jungle, and catching your customer at the right time (real-time) is essential in order to stay in the game.  For legitimate contextualisation, marketers need to be interacting with the customer in real-time, offering the products and deals that are pertinent to the consumer. Contextualisation and personalisation go hand in hand, and to master both of these aspects truly means mastering your marketing abilities. ‘Peak Performance saw a 50% increase in AOV along with 33% increase in website clicks through contextualisation and personalisation.’ – Source: SmartFocus. The most important aspect of email and mobile marketing is that emails are not considered intrusive anymore, whereas an offer promoted via text message could be. As emails are considered more favourable, they rectify the problems associated with direct-to-consumer mobile promotion, whilst allowing insights from location-based software to keep the message directly relevant, personal and in context. ‘Is email marketing dying?’ is a question that’s been lingering for a while now. The truth is, with technology around mobile further progressing, the ways businesses can further integrate and interact with email advances as well.  Mobile offers marketers a real opportunity to get creative and surpass the boundaries that are being set on a daily basis. Email is still one of the most effective products of promotion, with excellent ROI, and it helps to maintain trust between the business and the client. Having said this, traditional and irrelevant emails are certainly going to be left behind. Just as technology advances so too does customer expectation, which means you as a marketer need to be able to utilize your data and products to their full potential.  Author:  Kym Reynolds  Source:  http://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2017/jan/31/how-ensure...
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