I was chatting with someone about insurance direct marketing the other day, lamenting the fact that most insurance offers are hideous exercises in jargon and corporate speak.   

The person I was talking to wondered whether it was OK to use corporate-style language when marketing business-to-business, as opposed to business-to-consumer. I said no.

How come? Because people are human beings, even when they have their work heads on.

Whether we run multinational companies or spend our days reading ‘OK’ magazine and drowning in daytime telly, we invariably prefer clear, simple marketing communications that get the point across quickly and creatively without making  a meal of it. With no jargon and no convoluted corporate speak.

It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to. Good communication is about clarity, simplicity and brevity… every time.

(Thanks to http://www.sxc.hu/profile/barunpatro for the royalty-free, fee-free image)

Rummaging around in the musty underbelly of my blog, I discover I haven’t tested direct mail for four years. Blimey.

It just shows you how powerful DIY SEO can be if you plug away for years on end. I’ve been on page one of Google for my top three key phrases for a long time now. At least two years. But it’s dangerous to be complacent. It’s about time I broadened my marketing reach. And tested my direct marketing skills to make sure I’m still hitting the ROI mark.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• thought about my offer – and decided on a very straightforward, integrated approach. Just a simple message and contact details against a background that echoes my website headers. Plus, because I’m selling ‘me’, a photo
• designed, written and artworked an A6 postcard, full colour both sides, using Adobe InDesign
• ordered 100 cards online – digital print, thick card, matt finish, £90 including VAT, delivered startlingly fast – thanks to Solopress
• set up a spreadsheet to collect segmented email addresses and make a note of response / conversion / ROI
• thought about quantities – last time I did DM I was snowed under so I’m going to mail out really small quantities, probably ten at a time
• thought about my target market – I think I’ll go for web design, development, SEO and creative agencies in central Brighton. I might also send my card to a load of cool, small Brighton businesses that don’t already use a copywriter (I’ll be able to tell by the state of their websites)
• thought about timing – it’s the end of July and everyone goes away in August. It’s a daft time to do DM. So I’m aiming to post my first batch of cards in week 2 September, to drop on doormats on Friday 9th when everyone’s in jolly, generous weekend mood
• decided to hand write each card’s address because the more personal you can make it, the better. Best writing at the ready!
• reminded myself the quantities are so small I won’t be able to draw statistically valid conclusions about ROI performance. If get a 50% response and 80% conversion on my first batch of ten (which is what my last effort generated) it doesn’t mean I’ll get the same for the remaining 90 cards
• kept a note of the costs so far, including my time, so I can calculate ROI accurately

What is segmentation?

Segmentation means splitting your prospect or customer data into chunks – segments – so you can send a specially tailored marketing message to each.

How can you segment your data?

Here’s a few examples:

• customers / prospects
• recent buyers / frequent buyers / people who haven’t bought for ages
• marketing responders / non responders
• people who have bought specific goods (useful for tightly targeted up-selling and cross selling campaigns)

Why segment your data?

• targeted marketing almost always out-performs non-targeted work. Which means you make more money
• targeted campaigns and everyday communications deliver better customer service. Which means prospects are more likely to become customers. And customers are more likely to come back for more

Once upon a time direct mail was seen as the lowest of the low. Endless poorly-crafted bank, credit card and insurance offers. Cheap and nasty. Avoided by posh brands. Derided by the media as wasteful, profligate and poorly targeted.

But the evidence is stacking up for a real direct mail revolution. Once the poor relation, good old DM is being adopted by a flurry of luxury sector players and premium brands as the next big thing. And they’re getting some astonishingly good response rates.

Take Land Rover UK, whose 8.6% response rate delivered a cost per sale of £59, pretty darned good when the average new Land Rover sells for more than forty grand. Boden, Ettinger and Scott Dunn are joining the DM party too, by all accounts reaping impressive returns on investment.

Their secret? It’s no secret. As direct marketers have been saying for decades, winning direct mail campaigns succeed because:

• the offer is highly relevant, targeted tightly and intelligently to a specific market with a specific need
• the creative is as good as the offer

There’s nothing better than getting an attractive,  relevant offer through the post that hits you hard with an appropriate level of eye candy. There’s nothing less appealing than getting a mailing that’s completely alien to your tastes and needs as well as butt ugly.

A useful piece of direct marketing wisdom…

… it tends to take us three goes before we ‘get’ an advertising message. On TV, the first time we see an advert we get a fleeting impression of its meaning. The second time we flesh the idea out a bit. The third time everything falls into place.

A series of ads is useful for encouraging trust and improving your credibility. When you advertise regularly you’re obviously there for the duration. Not an unreliable fly-by-night.

A series of print ads invariably pulls a much better response than a one-off too. You end up with a bigger reaction than the sum of the parts might suggest. Again, it’s probably something to do with trust as well as the cumulative emotional impact of a strong, consistent message.

So… it’s better to book a run of ads than a single ad. And don’t expect a massive instant response. If you’re testing a marketing medium, give it at least three goes before you decide whether or not it works for your business.

Direct marketing and targeting go hand in hand. As a general rule targeted segments respond better than random segments, delivering a higher ROI. But can targeting be taken too far? 

Facebook and Ebay target their on-site advertising based on your profile and/or previous history. Which sounds reasonable. But life isn’t that simple. Make too many assumptions and you can alienate people. 

I give to animal, wildlife and environmental charities via Ebay’s charity donation system. Which used to mean my Ebay account was stuffed with animal charity ads and not much else. Because I didn’t want Ebay deciding what I could and couldn’t see, I turned the option off. Now I’m enjoying random ads again. That’s better!  

Then there’s Facebook. Based on my profile Facebook ‘thinks’ I’m in the market for wedding dresses and menopause treatments. Hm. Yes, I’m forty eight. Yes, I’m engaged to be married for the first time. But frankly, Facebook’s targeting is more offensive than inspiring.

And there’s Google. Google claims they can use your search history to improve the search results it delivers. But I’d rather Google didn’t make value decisions on my behalf. When I search the internet I want access to everything, not just the bits Google thinks I’ll like. 

OK, it makes total sense to target fishing rod offers to people who enjoy fishing, rather than any old Tom, Dick or Harry. But beyond that, targeting should be handled with great care. Otherwise you risk tipping over the edge into Big Brother territory. 

If you want to stop Google keeping hold of your search history, just hit the little blue spanner in your Google toolbar and switch it off. 

I’ve written about EON before, praising their excellent plain language marketing. Here’s another great email marketing campaign that arrived in my inbox this morning. 

In a clever collaborative cross-sell initiative, they’ve offered us a free water saving gadget for the shower. The gadget somes via a third party supplier savewatersavemoney.co.uk, Britain’s largest water efficiency shop.

It’s a sensible partnership - much less of a commercial oxymoron than supermarkets and banks. 

The offer is clear as a bell, short and sweet, written in their usual crisp, plain language, no messing about.   

The fact that EON has water efficiency in mind makes people like me feel warmer towards the brand. 

There’s a clear opt in, with tick boxes if you want to receive more offers from EON and their partners, or from savewatersavemoney specifically. Because the offer is relevant to me, I ticked the savewatersavemoney opt in box. So they’ve got me on their database… I’m officially a hot prospect!  

Like all good direct marketing it’s properly targeted, relevant and logical, clear and simple, imaginative and well expressed. And, vitally, they’ve thought conversion through just as carefully as lead generation. Applying for our free gadget was fast and easy.

A lovely example of the creative application of logic. Which is exactly what intelligent direct marketing is all about.  

So it’s a good idea to revisit your site with DM in mind every now and again to make sure your focus is correct, especially when several people have their fingers in your website pie!

If you’re doing a proper job of it you’ll be updating your site regularly with fresh content, making frequent amends to existing content, removing and adding special offers, links… etc etc. Here’s some sensible guidelines to help check the fundamentals of your website are still working hard from a DM perspective:

• can visitors still navigate easily or has it all got a bit too complicated?
• does every link work?
• are your calls to action in the right place / still there?
• has essential information fallen below the fold when it should be above?
• are your key words and phrases still in place, in the right density?
• is your content in priority order for SEO?
• are you focusing on the right key words and phrases or have things changed?
• is your message clear or have you muddied the water with too many edits?
• are your images still relevant?
• does your meta data need updating in line with your key words and phrases?
• could your source code do with tidying up so it complies with web standards?
• are your footer links up to date?
• is your sitemap up to date?

If it’s relevant, check it. If it doesn’t seem relevant, check it anyway just in case! At least you’ll know you’ve shone your direct response torch into every dark corner and put everything possible straight.

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Print speaks. But quality print shouts!

It isn’t often you find a product that’s worth making a big noise about. But this is one of them.  A friend showed me some mini-cards from moo.com today and I was blown away for the first time in ages.

Digital print doesn’t always mean quality print. In a highly competitive sector where speed and price often come way before quality, moo’s minicards are printed on mega-thick stock for a chunky, classy feel. They’re not cheap… but they come at a very reasonable cost. Delivery isn’t particularly fast… but it’s so worth the wait. And you can personalise every single one of them.  

Moo also does a complementary range of digitally printed mini-masterpieces, designed to help direct marketers, brand champions and creatives make an impact so strong it’s almost audible. I give them a wholehearted and completely unsolicited 10 out of 10! 

Here’s a link to moo‘s minicards page.

As a direct marketer I don’t feel comfy unless I know exactly how much profit my marketing campaigns have made. To the penny! 

Offline marketing is traditionally divided into above the line and below the line campaigns. Below the line involves un-glamorous media like direct marketing and cheapo Direct Response TV. Above the line is fluffy stuff like glossy magazine ads and big budget TV brand building.  

You can always calculate ROI, cost per response and cost per sale below the line. But the profitability of above the line work is harder – if not impossible – to quantify. There’s a definite correlation between, say, a high visibility TV branding campaign and an increase in brand awareness. But you can’t really pin down its actual monetary value.  

There are some interesting parallels online.

Direct response campaigns like email marketing generate measurable returns. As does SEO, which visibly increases physical visitor numbers. 

Social media marketing is a different kettle of fish, similar to above the line marketing. You can tweet until you’re blue in the face but it isn’t always possible to relate your spend to actual income.

Having said that, Twitter and co are slowly coming into their own as far as relatively ethereal stuff like reputation management and brand building is concerned.

I plan to hang fire until the medium’s first major financial coup is announced. Once I can see a crystal clear connection between social media marketing investment and return, I’ll consider joining the party!