Studies indicate that only 58 % of direct marketing operations are deemed effective. That means that in four cases out of ten, the operation or campaign has no significant effect on the brand’s market share or sales.

Considering that many of these campaigns are extremely costly, should we tolerate such blatant wastefulness in these tough times?

What to do?

For some background, below we’ve an excerpt from an insightful article by expert media consultant Harvey Hirsch reminding us on how we market today, what’s going horribly wrong and ideas on how to fix it.

“… This ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to marketing is so antiquated, so primitive, and generally so ineffective that when you add it up, it costs every company that employs it between $600 and $1,500 to generate a sales lead…

Americans [and NZer's] are assaulted over 4,000 times a day by media messages (that figure varies upward depending on who I consult with), and cutting through that clutter is all I am hired to do. And my first choice is always a 3-Dimensional, personalized and printed, full-color, emotionally charged, hand-assembled mailer, followed by a well-trained telemarketing person who sets up a live person-to-person 1:1 meeting. This is true multi-channel marketing…

Following these guidelines has allowed my clients to generate sales appointments for under $200 a piece. Not only have some of these programs generated over 50% response rates (we actually hit the 90% response rate recently), they have allowed our clients to trim non-productive marketing programs out of their budgets and actually plan for controlled growth, even in these economically uncertain times.

And here’s what I’ve learned.

The future of marketing is evolving into short run, personalized, well-targeted, “Coney Island” enhanced, B2B direct mail, versioned to go 3-deep into a prospective company with Information on Demand as an on-line back-up, handed off to a skilled telemarketing support team who’s only mission is to generate a face-to-face with a well-trained sales person. Using this system, not only can you baseline efficacy, you can actually predict expansion and growth.”

So, where to from here? A realisation that something has to change. Company owners and marketers need to investigate far better methodologies and strategies that make our messages more personalized and relevant to the recipient. To start demanding response rates that give a real return on investment, not just marketing for pure ‘branding’.

Topic: databases, direct mail, marketing, Media Link, ROI, Variable Data Printing

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The Secret to High Response, Super-Effective Marketing is being able to migrate from a traditional mass market advertising model (i.e. ‘Spray and Hope’ ads or mailers), to one that helps clients receive relevant, personalized one-to-one communication – Direct Mail pieces (paper or email) that are WANTED.

But adopting this new strategy brings many new challenges:

1. Most clients have not collected the right data, or any data, on their customers, and if they have it, they are reluctant to share it.
2. Companies that have successfully produced programs using new bells and whistles are not sharing their results for fear that their competition will learn how to catch up to them.
3. A majority of creative content providers (writers and designers at the agencies) are totally without any understanding of or how to write and design for variable, versioned pitches, let alone Web-print-to-Web programs, or database mining.
4. There is the commoditisation in the products offered by a majority of print providers, and how it affects content providers, like creative firms.

(N.B. Above list derived from an amazing article by Harvey Hirsch)

Although challenging, none of these issues are insurmountable. The blueprint for success, although not widely known, is there and well proven. And like all successful marketing or advertising campaigns, expert planning and execution is the key.

Show me the money!

Certainly in our tight economy, the financial incentives to improve business results is strong. The question here is why continue using a largely ineffective, unprofitable marketing and advertising model, when a better, more cost-effective one can provide many times higher sales results?

Topic: agencies, Copywriting, databases, design tips, direct mail, marketing, Print to Web, ROI, savings

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