Tag Archives: Direct Marketing

What is Direct Marketing?

January 5, 2010 – 2:00 pm

The CMA Direct Marketing Council explores and responds to various issues affecting direct marketing professionals. We recently reviewed and updated our mandate to ensure that we continue to deliver value to CMA members.

The path to this mandate led to many interesting discussions on the current state of direct marketing (DM). We looked at traditional definitions of DM and agreed it was time for an update.

The traditional definition of Direct Marketing is: a marketing discipline that seeks to elicit an action (such as an order or a request for further information) from a selected group of customers in response to a communication. The communication may be in any of a variety of media and response should be measurable.

The world of the direct marketer has changed with the proliferation of online and digital media, changes in consumer preferences and access to information, and the move towards insights-based marketing. The differentiator that DM once owned – the ability to measure results – is now a requirement for most, if not all, disciplines and media.

Taking all of this into account, the council drafted a new definition: Direct Marketing is the use of media to directly engage targeted audiences to drive profitable business results.

However, while preparing this blog to invite input from the industry, I realized that the definition needs to go one step further and expand on DM’s measurability factor.

I propose an even more refined definition:

Direct Marketing is the use of media to directly engage targeted audiences to drive profitable business results that can be tracked, recorded, analyzed and stored for future retrieval and use.

So, DM Council and CMA blog readers, what do you think?

By Rosalie McGovern, General Manager, Marketing and Business Development, Direct Marketing at Canada Post Corporation and the Chair of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

By CMA on behalf of Rosalie McGovern | Posted in Alberta Business | Comments Off

Traditional Marketing is Dead

October 26, 2009 – 2:07 pm

In the early nineties there was a notion that the internet would alter the face of Direct Marketing. Unless you live in a cave, it has! But it is not just the Internet that has changed the way we market products or services, technology has also had a dramatic impact on how we conduct and market our businesses.

In fact, it is my position that technology has surpassed the marketer. There is a new breed of marketer that is emerging from our schools and universities. They understand the power of the web and know how to use it well. But in the world of clicks, unique clicks, soft bounces, downloads, hard bounces, followers, blogs and viewers, two basic fundamentals of marketing are slowly disappearing: accountability and measurability.

Unless the goal of an online marketing campaign is to raise awareness, business owners are solely interested in ROMI. Unfortunately, tracking mechanisms are often excluded from the Call to Action (sometimes there is no CTA) on many new initiatives and metrics such as those listed above do not demonstrate success (at least in a monetary fashion).

So what do we do?

Vish Ramkissoon, Partner FSA Datalytic, is a member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council.

By CMA on behalf of Vish Ramkissoon | Posted in Alberta Business | Also tagged , | Comments Off

5 Ways to Beat the Attention Shortage

August 11, 2009 – 2:00 pm

Economist Herbert Simon put forward the theory that abundance of one resource creates a shortage in another.

The internet has allowed for the fast, easy and almost free creation of massive amounts of content. Overabundance. This has created a scarcity of attention. This poverty of attention is the problem for marketers. How to gain attention when there is so much competition.

5 ways to break the Attention Poverty cycle are:

1 – Stay right on target. There are certain publications I look forward to and read cover to cover every issue because their topic is highly interesting to me. The moral is – speak to people who are interested in you message.

2 – Use illustrations and pictures with captions. Pictures can break the attention block and captions get read.

3 – Use headlines to capture attention. The headline is to an advertisement or message what the first chapter of a book is. Get them hooked and they will read it all.

4 – Keep it short. People choose what to pay attention to by how long they think it will take them to deal with it.

5 – Make it simple. People like simple and any roadblock or complexity will stop them. Simplicity pays.

Some of these are old fashioned marketing 101 but some (like the keep it short) are even more important now than ever.

By Jim Estill | Posted in Alberta Business | Also tagged | Comments Off

Size Doesn’t Matter

July 30, 2009 – 2:00 pm

Truly – it doesn’t. Here’s why….

I recently moderated the Direct Marketing Creative Roundtable on behalf of the CMA (and its Direct Marketing Council) at the Drake Hotel. We had a small but engaged audience – and 3 incredibly talented and diverse presenters: Mike Halminen, VP, Creative Director at MacLaren MRM, Clare Meridew, VP, Creative Director at Grey Worldwide and Tracy Coen, Senior Art Director at Rivet.

Mike spoke about how to use interactive design to increase engagement and ultimately, response. Think about the idea that will interest a consumer and incent response vs standard ‘boiler plate’, ‘kill it and bill it’ creative mentalities. Push the medium but stay true to accountability.

Clare spoke about how the online channel is a perfect medium for direct marketing in terms of insight gathering, quick results, ease of measurement and access to fast and efficient innovation.

Finally Tracy spoke of how to cut through the clutter by using emotion and impact in design. And staying true to our Council’s philosophy of integration, demonstrated this using the most traditional of channels, direct mail.

All 3 creative hot shots showed great work that most importantly drove business results. And our audience asked many questions, probed through to understand original strategies and genuinely connected to the presenters and their material.

Small audience + big ideas = 1 great roundtable. Size doesn’t matter.

Can’t wait for next year.

By Robin Whalen | Posted in Alberta Business | Comments Off

Yes but is it personal?

June 17, 2009 – 2:00 pm

In my role as a Direct Mail Specialist, I am exposed to many direct mail pieces that are created by marketers trying to talk one-to-one to their customers or prospects. Too often I find marketers are still only taking advantage of minimal information that is available in their databases, and are not taking advantage of the technologies available to them.

As technology has advanced, the opportunity to create better targeted mailings has increased.

When laser printing became the preferred method of personalization for direct mail letters, some marketers embraced the ability to communicate with a personalized message while others only littered the recipient’s letter with their name over and over again.

A perfect example of a company using their database to its fullest potential is an automotive manufacturer that created an ongoing “service” mailing to their customers that included a scanned watermark of their specific vehicle in the background of a letter that referenced their make and model, dealer name, address, phone number, sales and service hours of operation, Service Manager’s name, and signature, a map to locate the dealer, and a specific offer on a coupon that was selected based on the dealer’s preference, and value of the vehicle.

Since the introduction of VPOD (variable print on demand), more emphasis has been placed on variable images printed in colour that are unique to the recipient based on their segmented data group.

Our company recently sent out a self-promotional mailing that I feel is a great example of effectively using technology to create a highly personalized piece. The objective of the mailing was to generate qualified leads by driving responders to our Website to play Texas Hold’ em, for the opportunity to win a $1,000 gift certificate to a casino. This made for a relevant communication, as our audience profiling efforts proved that this was an attractive offer to our target audience.

A letter was tailored to the recipient with signature and contact information of an assigned company representative and inter-company division based on their industry segment. A fully-variable brochure was created that included the recipient’s first name, logo of the assigned division, name and image of their assigned representative, their unique Game PIN, and 2 randomly selected playing cards. Both of these personalized pieces were matched and inserted into an envelope with another brochure that was specific to the recipient’s segment using selective inserting technology.

All of the noted elements made for a highly personalized piece based on data segmentation. Will the recipients of our mailing appreciate the data variable intricacies that were involved to make this piece? Maybe not. Will they feel that the mail piece talks to them on an individual level? I’m betting on it.

The tools are there, we have the technology, let’s use it to create more relevant communications with our intended audiences.

I would love to hear your comments on how testing the level of personalization or variable images has affected your response rates.

Authored by Troy Draper, Direct Mail Specialist, Smart DM

By CMA on behalf of Troy Draper | Posted in Alberta Business | Comments Off