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B P S U RV E Y DIRECT MARKET ING Element Of Surprise What’s going on in direct marketing, including direct mail? Emily Styles finds out from some industry players Ignition was founded by David O’Sullivan and Jennifer Williams in 2000 as an integrated, direct marketing, advertising and promotions agency. The agency styles itself as ‘integrated ideas people’ and was recently named An Post Smart Marketing Agency of the Year 2016. What type of businesses should be considering DM/direct mail campaigns? All businesses, whether large or small, should always consider direct mail/marketing as part of their strategy, but more definitely when they integrate it with other channels, such a digital. DM and digital have data at their core and a growing reliance on personalisation, which can add value to each medium when they complement, rather than compete with each other. Certain products or services do lend themselves more to an online environment, but that shouldn’t necessarily exclude them from using direct mail as a tactical channel when the need arises. Certain B2B marketing situations might call for a ‘surgical strike’ when looking to target a small group of very senior people. We call them ‘conduit clients’, or people who we need to convert from gatekeepers to those who can open the door to a significant and wider commercial opportunity for a brand. With direct mail, what’s more important – the pitch, the creative, the call to action or the list? If executed properly with a compelling creative idea, a direct mail campaign should deliver more than the sum of its parts in terms of its effectiveness. The various elements all have an impact to differing degrees, with some, like copy and design, working more in tandem with each other, rather than having separate individual roles. If you think of how Olympic circles overlap, it’s similar to how the components exert a greater or lesser role in the impact of a DM campaign. What was it that impressed the Smart Marketing Awards judges? We had a fairly large output during 2015, with a range of eight different creative campaigns being acknowledged with awards by the judges. Overall, it comes down to a desire to engage and enthrall a target audience through thoughtprovoking creative, where design reinforces copy effectively and gives the product or service a sense of context and relevance in the consumers’ lives. Data and personalisation remain a significant part of what we do because we believe it’s important to acknowledge the needs or wants of consumers as people, before you can provide an answer through the brand you’re promoting. If I go over the three campaigns that won for art direction, all were based on ‘Direct mail gives you the element of surprise over your audience’ David O’Sullivan tapping into a range of human emotions and all were digitally printed and personalised. All were designed with diecuts, or finishes, to help tell a visual story that made the copy more intriguing, more tactile and more impactful. For our ‘Happy Friday 13th’ campaign, the title itself and front visual of a black cat with menacing spot-laminated blue eyes certainly created the reaction we were looking for. It’s why direct mail is a fantastic medium to work in, as it gives you or your brand the element of surprise over your audience, which adds much more resonance to a good creative idea. What attributes are required for DM professionals? Understanding the sales objective of creativity and how ‘the sell’ is expressed through design, copy, data and the print and production elements of campaigns are essential. You have to think like a consumer even when you’re the wrong gender, wrong age, and from a different socio-economic background. There’s a skill and a discipline in honing a creative idea into a format that works effectively on a number of levels. Survey continued on page 46 44 BUSINESS PLUS JULY 2 0 1 6 B P S U RV E Y DIRECT MARKET ING ‘Targeting is the crucial building block of any good direct mail campaign’ DMCM was set up by Peter Whelehan who holds an honours degree in Psychology and postgraduate DBS in Marketing from the Smurfit School of Business. What type of businesses should consider direct mail campaigns? Any business with a database. The size of the database doesn’t matter because bigger databases allow for more and better segmentation and clustering of customers within the main database. That in turn allows for more tailored and relevant offers to these segments or clusters. This is where companies are getting cleverer with the use of the much-vaunted ‘big data’. Are certain sectors more suited to DM than others? Sectors that communicate regularly with their customers are probably a bit more suited to DM, particularly sectors where some sort of physical engagement is important. With online and email scams rife, customers want to receive communications they can trust and physical direct mail allows for this in key industry sectors, such as banks, insurance companies, utilities and the like. Anyone can send an email to any number of people at little or no cost, so there’s often a trust issue around email and online communications that more traditional DM doesn’t have to worry about, in B2C and B2B marketing. What does direct mail bring to the party that other advertising does not? Very precise targeting and true brand engagement. With above-the-line advertising, no client knows for sure if their ad is being seen or getting noticed by their target audience, so there can often be huge budget wastage. DM is different in that we know exactly who is getting the communication piece. It amazes me that some brands spend six-figure budgets on ‘awareness’ or ‘brandbuilding’ advertising yet sometimes find it hard to set aside a reasonable fivefigure sum for engaging, creative DM 46 BUSINESS PLUS JULY 2 0 1 6 Peter Whelehan that will be more tangible and engaging, and will usually drive a better response and ROI. It’s important that above-the-line brand and awareness advertising in the auto industry is supplemented with clever, creative and engaging direct marketing, which comes in behind it to create physical engagement and drive response once the awareness is there. Often the response can be ringfenced specifically to a DM campaign by incorporating a landing page, or by having an offer that only appears in the DM piece. So when we review a campaign we know the exact response and return the DM was responsible for, as the offer may not have appeared above the line or in any other channel. The fact that less direct mail has been happening in recent years should be seen as an opportunity. With less DM in people’s letterboxes now, those DM pieces that are being sent are having a greater impact. With online channels, it’s incredibly difficult for advertisers to stand out and to get the attention of those aged 18-24, despite the fact that they’re online most of the time. What’s more important - the pitch, the creative, the incentive or the list? The targeting (list or database) is by far the most important factor. Creative grabs people emotionally and gets them excited, as does a good offer, but there’s no point in sending a highly creative message with a great offer to the wrong person. For example, if I get a clever, creative and engaging DM piece that looks incredible from a design and production point of view, and it’s offering me 60% off landscape gardening this summer, it won’t have any impact if I live in an apartment – it’s just not relevant. The creative and the offer must also be relevant to the person being targeted, so targeting is the crucial building block of any good direct campaign. The offer, creative sales pitch and call to action should all be built around this in any DM campaign. Survey continued on page 48 WHO CARES WINS If you care about creativity, results and relationships, then we have a lot in common. For over ten years DMCM has worked with speed, agility and smart creativity to put a smile on people’s faces and incentivise them to buy. But we care about much more than short-term sales. We’re here to help clients acquire new customers and build long-term, profitable relationships with them. Showing customers you care about them is a recipe for success. And so is using creativity to build relationships and deliver results. Sticking to this commonsense formula has earned DMCM a stream of awards over the years. And 2016 has been no exception. You care about winning. We do too. So let’s get you up to speed and talk about how we can do it - together. B P S U RV E Y DIRECT MARKET ING ‘The number of direct mail campaigns has increased due to a more forensic use of data’ Dataconversion Direct is a leading integrated direct marketing solutions and software services provider based in Dublin. Anna Browne works with clients on their data issues, offering solutions and insights to focus their direct marketing strategy and increase customer acquisition, loyalty and retention. As the economy recovers, what sectors are committing more investment to DM and direct mail? The past year has been very successful for Dataconversion Direct (DDL). We are now two years back in our original home in Pearse Street and in that time we have refocused our efforts in datadriven marketing. We have also acquired a software development house, which has given us 48 BUSINESS PLUS JULY 2 0 1 6 Anna Browne B P S URV E Y the resources to be able to build bespoke data solutions for our existing and prospective clients. We have seen significant moves from the financial, automotive and retail sectors back into direct mail. While the overall volumes in direct mail have dropped, the number of campaigns has increased due to a more forensic use of data. How important is data analysis? Data can seem daunting to small and large firms alike, which is where a company like DDL comes in. We will walk you through any data analysis or integration project, make data easy to understand and link it to your management KPIs. We aim to give our clients a ‘single view’ of their data, taking various data sources from either within or external to the business and combining them for analysis purposes to drive business insight. One of DDL’s service offering relates to email. How difficult is it for email to perform an effective marketing role? Email broadcasts are only as good as the data behind them. Similar to largevolume direct mail, the days of a ‘spray and pray’ approach are now gone. A good email campaign needs to be targeted by the correct product to the correct person at the correct time, otherwise you run the risk of largevolume unsubscribing. Furthermore, we encourage our customers not to view it as an isolated communication channel, but rather one in a range of customer engagement channels, all of which link back to your single-view reporting. To what extent are companies taking advantage of the new Eircode address system? We are a value-added reseller for Eircode and we’re currently undertaking the accreditation process. Initial take-up was slow, as most of our clients were in ‘wait and see’ mode. However, now that Eircode has celebrated its first birthday the number of enquiries has increased in the last two months in particular. Eircode works with DDL’s business model, allowing customers to view their customer base with more granularity, which obviously assists in targeted communications. DIRECT MARKETIN G How To Use Direct Mail Customers want the right content, at the right time, and in the right place. They want compelling content that makes them feel emotions, creates intent, and inspires action Decide what your objectives are: for example, making direct sales, maintaining customer relationships or generating new enquiries. Identify your target audience, typically similar to your existing customers. Establish your budget. Consider how much each response will be worth to you and the likely response rate. Plan the timing of the mailshot. Avoid holidays and ensure that mailings that are linked to a specific event arrive in good time. Build your own mailing list and keep it up to date. Keep records of enquiries and existing customers and ask existing contacts for new leads. Consider renting a mailing list. Clearly specify your target audience, how many names you want and whether you intend to re-use the list. Make sure you get your lists from a reputable business. Ensure that the list has been cleaned to remove any names that have opted out of receiving mailings. Ensure that your use and storage of personal data complies with the Data Protection Act. Prepare a letter with a clear, attention-grabbing message selling the benefits of your offer. People make decisions based on emotion. Then they justify that decision with logic. To set up a sale, appeal to emotion first. To close and confirm the sale, use logic. Design the mailshot to be attractive. Personalise the envelope and letter as far as possible and don’t be afraid to get creative. The credibility that a professional design DMCM used a Tarot cards theme for a direct mail campaign for SEAT lends to your marketing message is well worth the investment. Make responding easy (e.g. with a pre-printed reply card) and consider offering an incentive to reply promptly. Every direct marketing message includes three basic elements: an offer, enough information for immediate acceptance of the offer and a mechanism for responding to the offer. Use test mailings to establish likely response rates, and to compare the effectiveness of different mailshots or mailing lists. Success depends on continually testing and refining all the elements of a mailing, rather than necessarily having a flash of creative genius. Decide how you will handle the response and make any necessary preparations. For example, train employees how to deal with enquiries and ensure you have adequate stocks. Send out the mailing. Consider using a specialist mailing house to handle large mailings. Analyse the response. Record which contacts have been mailed and their response. Survey continued on page 50 BUSIN ESS PL US JULY 2016 49 B P S U RV E Y DIRECT MARKET ING Direct Mail Resurgence Online advertising’s difficulty is direct mail’s opportunity, as ad-blocking shows why direct mail still works, writes An Post’s Fiona Heffernan or several years now, direct mail marketing has been buffeted by threats from rival direct marketing substitutes that make a lot of noise and promises. Despite this, direct mail has held its own and in general the various marketing channels have learned to co-exist by finding their places in the food chain. Indeed, direct mail has evolved to do the business for brands that, five years ago, lived solely in the land of online. While ‘transactional’ mail is experiencing steady declines globally, in Ireland ‘marketing’ with mail volumes are increasing. This has been fuelled by the direct marketing ecosystem shifting and changing. F Consumer Driven The improving fortune of direct mail is being driven by consumers, through the action of downloading ad-blocking software to their devices. To put this into perspective from a mails point of view, you may see ‘no junk mail’ signs on letterboxes around the country, but more than double the amount of households now use digital adblocking. The threats of the past have become the opportunities of today. The resurgence of direct mail can be attributed to several factors: Three in four consumers say they enjoy direct mail as a marketing channel. While other channels are being blocked, direct mail is being enjoyed more. And that holds true for all ages, including 18- to 25-year-olds. Consumers pay attention to direct Fiona Heffernan mail – 89% of direct mail is read or skimmed for offers. Compare that to email advertising, for example, where over 2.5 times more is deleted without having been read. Direct mail is an online driver. As Ireland’s marketers seek out methods to counteract diminishing online reach caused by ad-blocking, direct mail becomes a viable new route to online buyers. Thus, the integration of direct mail into communication plans for online retailers is a growing trend. In Ireland, over half of Irish consumers say they will go online to find out more on receipt of relevant direct mail, and that’s just passive interest. The trick is to use promo codes and personalise the message. To get the best return, transfer the knowledge of what consumers are doing online into direct mail offers. Use information garnered from analytics in direct mail campaigns, i.e. if users are viewing items online but not buying, use this information to mail your registered user and offer on that specific product. Fiona Heffernan is Head of Post Media with An Post ADMAILER DIY DIRECT MAIL big success story for An Post in recent years has been AdMailer, a self-service direct mail service that works through the internet. Though AdMailer was initially devised with local businesses in mind, the programme has been picked up with enthusiasm by large companies too. At the AdMailer website, A 50 BUSINESS PLUS JULY 2 0 1 6 businesses can design postcard or letter campaigns using templates and select the streets and areas they want to target with a mapping tool. A campaign will be printed and delivered by An Post within three to four working days. An A5 postcard campaign currently costs 65c per item and a letter mailing is 90c plus VAT. The minimum cost of a campaign is €130 plus VAT, based on 200 postcards. According to Fiona Heffernan: “AdMailer was created as a sales generation tool for all sizes of business seeking to reach new customers. AdMailer is a low-risk sales tool that can be tested without the sting of a significant initial investment.” Direct Mail personally delivered by An Post While consumers are busy blocking some advertising, they’re also busy enjoying direct mail. Recent research from Millward Brown shows that, yet again, enjoyment levels for direct mail are on the increase. And, not only is direct mail experiencing consistently high levels of enjoyment amongst all consumers, it’s also hitting home with the country’s 18 to 25s. When planned as part of an integrated campaign, direct mail can be particularly powerful, bringing you the ability to target your audience with a truly focused message. If you’d like to know more about the power of direct mail, visit [email protected] or call us on 01 705 7494.