The advertising agency of the future will have to adapt to the changing ways of the business world. Instead of distinguishing themselves between specific disciplines, such as just a public relations agency, or just a direct mail advertiser, or just an outdoor advertising agency, or billboard advertising agency to get even more specific, advertising agencies of the future will have to broaden their horizons. They will have to become full on all-solutions marketing companies. A recent post on a great blog called Actionable Insights by Covario explains in full detail why a simple advertising agency may be a thing of the past. In the future, a marketing solutions company will be the answer to a business's problems.
This time I will talk about email advertising and direct mail.
Email advertising has increased in the past few years, but there still are limitations. Double opt-ins these days are the norm. Yet still, most click-through rates still average less than 0.5%.
This means that you can leverage your ad budget using a form of traditional media, namely direct mail. There are great advantages to a targeted direct mail program. First, due to higher rates for paper and postage, a lot of the competition has gone away. Direct mail is also one of the best performers when it comes to ROI, especially if you have a great offer and a great list. A great list is essential, so you must assemble your list with all the care in the world. If this is done properly, your database will be your business's most valuable asset.
Typical direct mail response rates range from 1% to 2% for general lists. But a mailing with a great offer to a targeted list in a specific industry can increase these rates many times over.
That's the last bit of advice on getting the most money out of your advertising dollars. Make sure that you test, measure, and track all of your ads so you can tell how many leads they generate, and how much your ROI is. Always know what you are buying.
This time I will talk about running a public relations campaign by being a contrarian.
These days it's great to go against what everyone else is doing, such as being optimistic when everyone else is pessimistic, or starting a business when everyone else is getting laid off.
You can use your story to your advantage by including it in your pitch to any traditional media. This way, you have more of a chance of being mentioned, especially if your business is unique or operating in an interesting niche.
Great stories are always in demand by media outlets that are looking for points of view that oppose the general media narrative of the day. At this point, the narrative in the U.S. is doom and gloom, but if you are the bright point of light, you can enjoy the public relations rewards now and for years to come.
Next time, I will talk about email advertising and direct mail.
For many online New Jersey marketing companies, online conversion rates are alot less than what they used to be. But simultaneously there are also some online marketing consultants who have experienced no significant drop in traffic conversions. This is because they have built exceptional subscriber loyalty over some years.
For many online New Jersey marketing companies, the biggest problem is email advertising deliverability. Email advertising is being filtered so heavily today that often less than 20% of a large mailing list gets delivered.
However, there are a few ways you can improve your email deliverability. One such way is to run it through a spam checker before sending it out. The best email advertising programs have built in systems that give you spam scores before sending your email out. So, for example, let's your email scores higher than a 1 on a 5 point scale, you should probably revise your email.
Also, a business totally dependent upon email advertising is not a very solid business. Businesses need a database that has not only names and email addresses, but physical mailing addresses as well. That way, if something apocalyptic ever happened in the world of email or the internet, they could just start using direct mail and still be in business.
Many ISP's now monitor email delivery rates, bounce rates, and even open rates. They use readily available data, and if a given ISP or third party list host has a dismal record, they may block all emails from that source. If ISPs are blocking sources that send out alot of emails that have very poor open rates, some online marketers may have to move to a different outlet.
For example, a business could start marketing through various social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace, and even build a larger email database. Businesses could use these social networking sites in much the same way that email is used. They can send direct communication messages with product/service offers, discounts, value deals, etc. And, since social networking sites are free to use, businesses will save money.
In a recent survey, email advertising was shown to be the preferred method of communication. When asked to rank their preferred methods of receiving marketing messages from vendors, 62% of responding consumers said that email advertising was their preferred channel of communication, followed by 23% for direct mail, and 13% for social media. The least preferred way to be contacted was telemarketing, with 80% putting it at the bottom of their lists.
The survey, conducted in Boston, MA, in October 2009, also showed that email advertising communications frequently trigger purchases, with 75% of respondents indicating that they had bought products or services as a direct result of receiving an email advertising message from a vendor.
The most common items bought as a result of direct email advertising were clothing and accessories (82%), followed by purchases from restaurants and coffee shops by 49% of respondents. Other popular items bought as a direct result of email advertising campaigns include grocery items (40%) and personal electronics (38%).
The survey also asked consumers about their involvement in social media direct marketing.
Social media marketing was found to be significant, with 40% of respondents stating they receive correspondence from vendors on the social networking sites they use, such as Facebook and Twitter. Nearly one in five people (17%) had volunteered or requested that companies actively contact or update them via these social media platforms.
Last time I talked about addressing your prospects' problems through relevant direct mail messaging. This time I will talk about using direct mail advertising and email advertising together to drive up response rates.
Because of the recession, some people have been discontinuing their direct mail campaigns because they think it is not cost effective enough. However, as an automotive ad agency, a retail advertising agency, and a professional services advertising agency, we like to think that we know what we're talking about. We know that the real metric we should be looking at is not just investment cost, but ROI. According to the experts, direct mail followed up by an email has a much higher ROI than either form of communication alone when running an integrated marketing campaign. Direct mail by itself also has a higher ROI with business-to-business when running a single faceted campaign.
The reasons for this are as follows. Most of the time, direct mail lists are alot cleaner than email advertising lists. Also, generally speaking, people are more accepting of unsolicited mail than they are of unsolicited email. After all, it's much more likely to open up an email and get a computer virus than it is to open up some mail and get an actual virus. Next, for business-to-business, direct mail is still delivered even if the prospect is no longer with the company. Email addresses, on the other hand, are usually turned off when a person leaves an organization. Think of all the people that got laid off in the recession and how many email addresses must have been turned off. Lastly, direct mail is subject to an infinite amount of creative possibilities, whereas something like print advertising, television advertising, or billboard advertising always has to follow a certain preset format. Even email advertising has to follow a specific template most of the time. But direct mail advertising is only limited by your own creativity.
Direct mail is a great way to increase your b-to-b clientele, especially as part of an integrated marketing campaign. And because of the recession, the cost for direct mail has actually gone down. Use direct mail to start a conversation with your prospects; follow up that conversation with an email; direct that prospect to your online assets; and finish the conversation with a sale.
In the last post I talked about using direct mail to get clients in non-traditional spaces, or spaces outside of the office. In this post I will talk about using targeted, relevant direct mail in order to address your potential customer's grievances.
Direct mail is the backbone of your marketing campaign, but to ensure that it fulfills all of its potential, every part of it should be customized and relevant. You need to be able to find out what is important to your audience. You can use that information to take your prospects through the buy cycle with meaningful, relevant messages that pertain to their needs and wants.
You need to be able to find out your prospects needs/wants/grievances and address them in their language. How do those grievances relate to your product/service? By answering that question, you can solve your prospect's problem with relevant messaging. You can even integrate relevant white papers (for business-to-business) to help your prospects identify with your company/business, which in turn will make them more likely to become your customer. For example, for us, we would distribute a white paper with our automotive marketing ideas, if and how they failed or succeeded, or if they increased automotive sales leads. Since our audience is mostly of the automotive industry, that white paper would be highly relevant to our prospects, they would identify with it since they probably have the same problems, and they would most likely be interested in our service since we know how to solve the problem.
Knowing your prospects' problems is the first step in being able to solve them. You can address those problems with proposed solutions through direct mail advertising. Getting their attention right away is critical, and this will help you to do just that.
In the last post I talked about using direct mail to start a conversation with prospective customers, a conversation for which the next step would be visiting your website/landing page. In this post I will talk about using direct mail advertising to obtain customers outside of the traditional office space. This is, obviously, directly relevant to business-to-business marketing.
Many professionals work outside of an office setting, including construction foremen and operations managers, health professionals, private tutors, or retail owners. Using direct mail as part of an integrated marketing campaign is essential when trying to reach these prospective clients and building relationships with them.
One way to integrate direct mail into your marketing campaign is to use it as a primer before or after an email or phone call. Doing this will enable your prospects to become familiar with your business and what it does, with you, and with your brand. This will make them more receptive to your other communications, such as email advertising, radio advertising, or print advertising.
It is also a good idea to integrate personalized landing pages/URLs in with your direct mail campaign. This will enable you to customize the call-to-action for each recipient, increasing the chance that the recipient will respond. The Direct Marketing Associations says that 33% of direct mail recipients go online to respond, and that increases by 20%-30% when personalized landing pages/URLs are used.
As said in the last post, you can capture prospects' information and build a database of qualified leads. That way you can also send follow-up emails or direct mails. Remember that direct mail is a great way to introduce your online assets to people, such as professionals outside of the traditional office space, who wouldn't normally be in front of a computer. Start that conversation with mail, drive it to your website, and end it with a sale.
Direct mail advertising provides key benefits as part of an integrated campaign. This week I will share notes on direct mail advertising as thought of by the experts in the business. These direct mail notes will be split up into 4 posts. Each of the 4 posts will have its own main point that you should take away from this. The first post will be about using direct mail to direct customers online. The second post will be about using direct mail advertising to get customers outside of traditional offices. The third post will be about using targeted direct mail to address your customers' grievances. And last, but not least, the fourth post will be about using direct mail and email advertising to complement each other in order to drive response.
Direct mail is a wonderful tool for directing your potential customers to your website. Through direct mail, you can send out a catalog of information about your company, along with a message telling recipients to go to your website. In fact, the catalog can be an extension of the website, or even vice versa if you prefer. Also, once at your website, potential customers can divulge some basic information such as name, address, and email address. In that manner, this can be a good tool for building databases of qualified leads.
Also, direct mail is a great tool for reactivating old, non-active customers. And since those customers already know you, you will have a 4 times higher response rate than with other, new customers.
It is a mistake, especially for business-to-business prospecting, to view your online and offline endeavours as separate channels. Your online and offline efforts should be used in conjunction with each other. You need to open up a conversation with prospects in order to not only obtain new customers, but also develop brand loyalty. Direct mail is a good way to start that conversation. Use it to direct prospects to the next step of the conversation, your website/landing page.
Recently, Ford ran a test personalized direct mail campaign directed towards more than 20,000 Ford F-150 owners who's warranties were coming to an end. Because of the personalization of the direct mail campaign, Ford saw an increase of 5.7% in response rate and an increase of 35.7% in sales penetration.
Ford's new direct mail campaign inserts personalized data and images that are relevant to specific consumers. The data was extracted from Ford divisions that kept detailed databases on consumers with demographic information such as age, income, and gender.
Using its new strategy, Ford will send out more than 1 million pieces of mail annually, offering extended warranty services to their existing customers. Ford expects its new strategy to bring in tens of millions of dollars in sales.
Let’s face it. The economy is still not that great. But there’s an upside to any recession. Businesses now have the opportunity to position themselves for when the market turns around. If you’re in the right position, your business will boom once the recession is over. And even though the economy is down, people still need products/services. So how do you position yourself properly?…DEALS!
“People need deals and deals need people.” You remember that scene in “A Beautiful Mind” when Russell Crowe, er, I mean John Nash, says the best option is the one that benefits both the individuals involved but also the group as a whole? In other words, you need to create deals for your product/service that are mutually beneficial for both the consumer and for you. The economy will stabilize once we’ve reached equilibrium.
And how do we reach that equilibrium, you ask? The WEB! The INTERNET! The entire ONLINE ARENA! Advertising online is the wave of the new century. And now is the best time, if any, to get your business into the 21st century. If you do, you’ll be in the best position when people start buying again. Why? Because there are a lot more people using the web right now than you think. In fact, the web is very quickly becoming the hub of all media. The web allows you to watch TV and movies, listen to the radio, or just download music, talk with friends (and even people you thought you would never see again thanks to a little something called social networking, i.e. Facebook, MySpace), buy pretty much anything you want, pay bills, do all your banking, and even get medical advice. The virtual world is slowly replacing the real one.
Of course that is not to say that traditional media advertising has no place in your marketing strategy. Traditional media, such as print advertising, television advertising, outdoor advertising, or direct mail, still serves the same function it has for years. But the market is rapidly becoming fully virtual. Instead of advertising your big savings deal in any traditional media, you can do it for alot cheaper on the internet. You can market your deals on your own website, on your competitor's websites, on any search engine, or any industry experts' websites in order to gain maximum visibility. And the precision of internet marketing will maximize your ROI since potential leads will all be those that are already interested in your product/service.
In order to fully corner the market, I suggest that you invest in all media, both traditional and online. However, the current economy may force you to be a bit more frugal with your capital. If that is the case, then you should certainly focus more on your web assets.
So when people start buying again, you better be prepared to meet them half-way. And when people start buying again and go online to do so, if your business isn’t online it probably won’t survive. In order to stay in business and meet the demands of the new century, you'll have to have a basic web foundation.
Here's a quick overview of how you can have a successful web foundation:
In the next couple of posts, I’ll give you some tips on how to get your money’s worth from the world of the Internet and advertising online. We'll go over what you'll need in order to have a comprehensive web foundation, including a website, an email marketing campaign, a social networking campaign, a blogging campaign, and search engine marketing. It’ll definitely be worth your investment.
Everybody these days is jumping on the “green” bandwagon.Want to save a tree?Want to contribute to saving the rainforests while still being able to market your business with the targeting precision of direct mail campaigns?Then how about email advertising.Email advertising has all the targeting advantages of direct mail, but it’s completely paperless and even more precise.As such, it costs a lot less and reaches a much greater targeted audience, maximizing your ROI.And our email advertising techniques make it easy to build lists of potential customers who either respond to your emails or fill out forms on your website, allowing you to bridge the divide between marketing and sales.
Advertise through email with us! Call us at 877-876-2995, or visit our website, or our other blog.
Our advertising agency is one of the only New Jersey marketing firms that doesn't just advertise to anyone and everyone. We target specific people, such as the people that would be interested in your product/service. This way you can maximize your ROI.
Direct mail campaigns are another great marketing strategy that target your specific customers, but based on a different concept.You can target previous customers for repeat business, or you can target entirely new customers based on the psychographics and demographics of your existing customers.This way you can target the direct mail to potential customers who are almost exactly like your past customers, so you know that they’ll be interested in your product/service.And the vast amount of bulk direct mail also allows you to perform a statistical analysis of responses, allowing for even better and optimal targeting in the future.
Thinking of running a direct mail campaign? Call us! 877-876-2995.
BOC Partners, Inc. is a privately held advertising agency located at 1030 South Ave West, Westfield, NJ. For the most part, we act as an aggressive retail advertising agency and provide marketing solutions to the most demanding of advertisers. One of our areas of expertise is the automotive sector as we work with many large retail automotive dealerships. For 25 years BOC Partners has been winning over the likes of this category of business, which provides BOC the resources to handle just about any advertiser for any industry. The volume of work and demands of "turn on a dime" deadlines gives BOC Partners the skill set to handle almost any task.
In the past 3 years BOC Partners has been called upon to provide its experience to other retail markets including professional services, consumer electronics, home improvement and real estate, financial institutions, as well as B to B (business to business) accounts. We specialize in both traditional media (print media, direct-mail advertising, broadcast communications, etc.) and online marketing (search engine optimization and marketing, email advertising, web site design, traffic analysis, etc.). Both our internet marketing campaigns and traditional marketing campaigns serve one end goal, increasing our clients’ sales; because as we all know, at the end of the day, sales are the only thing that matter (well, to businesses anyway).
Need assistance with your advertising strategy? Call us 877-876-2995!
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