Are direct mail and email like oil and water? Learn how to blend them to gain maximum direct marketing ROI
A whitepaper for direct marketers
By B2BDataPartners
Whitepaper
Table of Content
To start with ................................................................................................3 Standalone Direct mail ...............................................................................3 Standalone Email .......................................................................................4 Breaking the myth ......................................................................................5 To Online store, From Direct mail...............................................................6 To Offline store, From Email.......................................................................7 What Next - Your Take Home .....................................................................8
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Whitepaper
To Start With No industry today can run its campaign depending on a single channel (direct mail or email). It needs 2 (min.) or 3- 4 channels for a successful marketing campaign. Healthcare industry is no different. Today, healthcare decision makers prefer marketers/service providers who are omnipresent. They want to check the sample online before buying the same from the brick and mortar outlet. There are also some who prefer to be communicated through social networking sites. Marketers often get confused deciding which channel to take and which one to leave. Some of them also think that direct mail and email are like oil and water and can never get along well. This whitepaper is an attempt to break that confusion/myth. Below you will find how both direct mail and email can help each other to bring in visitors and customers to both online and offline stores.
Before going to how direct mail and email can help each other by sharing their roles and responsibilities, lets’ read quickly how they are helpful when they standalone.
Standalone Direct Mail This traditional marketing channel has its own charm. There are people who still prefer receiving good offers/discounts in a form of letter/flyers/postcards than emails. Direct mail does great if:
It is send to the right address Sending direct mails to a 6-month or an year old database and expecting good response is like hope in disguise and wastage of money. It is necessary to sit and check if all the addresses are correct, how and when you have last verified the postal addresses. Managing your data is a must. Especially, healthcare industry data demands regular checking
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Have nice impressive words/enticing offers and clear call to action The mail has to be interesting, useful, worth reading. Marketers should hire some experienced direct mail campaign writers who know the exact quantity of each ingredient required to be put in the direct mail. The direct mail reader should feel good after reading it and feel happy visiting the offline store. At the end of the mail, call to action should be clearly written. Making them guess what to do next distract the readers from taking any action at all.
A great offer Any promotional direct mail is incomplete without a lucrative offers or discounts. After spending valuable 5-10 mins reading the mail, the reader surely would like to know what special is there for him. With your enticing offers, you can stand separate in the reader’s mind.
Standalone Email Email marketing is a cost-effective, fast and easy to use marketing channel. In this busy world, executives, decision makers from industries like healthcare prefer to be contacted through email. Email does great if
It’s sent to opt-in list only Sending unsolicited mail is a bad practice and unlawful. It is like intrusion, not only it brings poor or no response, worst it brings spam complain, black listing, etc.
Have content free from spam words and false promises Content is the king - This works very well with email content. Each part of the email, from subject line, salutation, first line, offers, to call to action, and From address everything has to be taken care of.
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Are not untimely Just because with a single click you can send email to thousands of your clients/prospects, it doesn’t mean you have the liberty to send it anytime and every time. Segment your list based on various demography, send customized emails, track the response, send the next consecutive mails accordingly. Email, if not send timely with relevant messages can bring opt-out requests, spam complaints and low response with poor open-click rate.
A great offer Great offer is the eye for any marketing message, email is no different. Give attractive offers/discounts.
Breaking the Myth
As direct mail and email do great alone in bringing visitors, prospects, clients to offline and online stores respectively. However, not every marketer thinks and tries to blend them together and use email for offline stores and direct mail for online stores. To make them believe how they can be blended well to gain response and increase ROI, given below are two messages coming straight from the hearts of email and direct mail.
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To Online Store, From Direct mail
Date: 16thSeptember.10
Dear Online Store,
There are plenty of ways you can use direct mails to bring your prospects and clients to the online website/stores. Given below are some suggestions: Ease: People who prefer the traditional way - direct mail - as a channel for communication would surely expect simple ways to reach your online store, if you want so. For them even a long url with lots of hyphen and symbols is a big no. They prefer it to be small and easy-to-read url, or else they would not bother to pay attention. Providing simple url has more chances to be correctly typed, because new prospects have no patience to re-type it. Try personalized URLs, they are really close and personal to your prospects, and they might like to explore it. Add spice to the slice: Direct mail readers might not be very internet-friendly guys. They will not take a trip to your site, unless they have something useful to gain and interesting to see. Make your direct mail spicy and saucy with finger-licking offers like get a free whitepaper, pass for a trade show, $100-$1000 coupons, etc. Customized: There are marketers who still live in an illusion that one mail can suit the whole list. It never fitted nor will fit. Attract the reader’s interest and make they feel good to read it to the end by personalizing your mails. Personalize it wherever possible, salutation, headline, body of the mail, etc., however avoid overdoing it. A clear call-to-action: Of course you want them to visit your website and do something. But what? Mention it clearly at the end of the mail by mentioning the exact url they need to type. Say, you want them to register for a lucky dip contest or want them to be among the first 100 subscribers to win a coupon or discount on the product. Don’t forget to mention the deadline of the content or offer. Research suggests that this makes the reader act fast, if at all. Test, test, and test: Direct mails can be in the form of postcards, letter in an envelope, flyers, self-mailers. You cannot, again, say that one mode will be preferred by all. Keep testing, see what made each reader respond and keep a track of it. Next time act accordingly. Special welcome: Marketers are trying all the possible ways to impress their prospects visiting their website via direct mail. One such way is a special landing page. The direct mail lovers might find your home page confusing, crowded, and jumbled. Make their work easy by providing unique landing pages in continuation of the direct mail that made them to type the url. Win win situation: By providing a unique landing page for your direct mail prospects you are making them feel special. This is the right time to ask if they would like to be contacted through phone or email. If yes and your database doesn’t have their email address and phone number, request them to provide. You can also ask type of information they expect from you, etc. This way they too will feel good and you will also win their trust and contact details.” Hope marketers will use me to reach you. Thanks for your time. Yours Friendly, Direct Mail
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To Offline Store, From Email
How Email can Help Bring in Crowd to Offline Stores
Dear offline store, Like direct mail helping people to visit your online store, email too is a great channel to help bring them to your offline, brick & mortar store and encourages sale. Given below are some suggestions: Segmentation: Segmenting your email list based on geography, location, purchase preferences can help you learn a lot about them. Your next step then will be sending customized mails to them, people staying close to your outlet won’t mind dropping in there to check the product and offers. Make sure you email has exclusive offers/discounts (for store visitors) to impress them. Exclusive offer: As mentioned above, exclusive offers have a lot of impact on the email recipients mind to decide whether to visit the store or not. Offer something which is only in your offline store and not in the online store. Don’t forget to mention the time-line “Discount last….” or “Offer valid till ‘date’”. This will make them act fast and rush to your stores. Bonus offer: Email gives you the power to reach many more prospects like your subscriber by requesting them to ‘Forward to friend’. Also mention that by doing so they will win more discount or special gifts as Bonus offers on visiting your outlet. Track the names who forwarded your email, and on their visit make them feel special with bonus offers. Route map and detail address: With email you can attach route map and provide detail address at the end. Research says many online shoppers don’t visit store because they find it difficult to locate. With detail map and address you are sending the message that you really want them to visit your store. Another thing is uniqueness of the store. Is there something, you really want to highlight and think it’s worth highlighting. If yes, mention it in your email. You never know, the email recipient must be waiting for some interesting reasons to visit your outlet. Send regular: People who prefer receiving your emails, don’t say that they don’t like going to your offline stores. Your online store give them convenience to shop for sure, there are email recipients who prefer to make the final purchase by visiting the outlet. Sending regular mails keep you front in their mind, and may be today they are not ready to buy but later can drop in to your store when they need it.”
Hope marketers will use me to reach you. Thanks for your time. Yours Friendly, Email
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What Next - Your Take Home So think again. Going with conventional wisdom or aping a brand’s marketing techniques might not be a great way of doing marketing. Don’t abstain your products to be promoted through every channel direct mail, email and social media and see which one or two or all the three suits your business. Go for it. Please note these are tips and not commandments. Do what suits your business the most. At the end what matters is your customers and the ROI generated through them. If you are still in doubt, grab a ready-to-use direct marketing list with both email and postal addresses, and see the result.
About B2BDataPartners B2Bdatapartners is a business cycle management company with clients across the world. B2Bdatapartners have transformed the way businesses work with cutting-edge technology and business management skills. We pride at offering customized solutions based on the clients’ requirements and business scope.
B2Bdatapartners offers services that will help clients with their complete business cycle. This includes sales, marketing and customer service. For a business to work smoothly all the three wings have to work hand in hand. This is what B2Bdatapartners seek to do. With our services and applications, we help our clients bring all their business processes together and make their jobs easier.
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