This process made sense in a world of mass media, but it is quickly becoming obsolete. With the rise of digital marketing, each step along the lifecycle of a campaign was changed as knowledge of the consumer increased and targeting options multiplied. Yet the concept of the campaigns still persists, though is now executed at a more granular level.

The start of the move to digital proved effective because it allowed marketing messages to be much more relevant to the individual consumer. Marketers didn’t have to think of their consumers in broad groups based on demographics, but could instead use far more detailed information to reach the right person with the right message.

I believe that the next iteration in this development will bring about the end of the campaign.

Marketing will become more fluid taking the shape of an ongoing relationship between brands and their consumers instead of distinct campaigns. Ad targeting and optimization technology will improve so that each consumer will receive their own message customized based on a multitude of factors.

Many direct marketers are already doing versions of this. The emails I get from Amazon are based on books that I have said that I like - things like my age, gender, and occupation don’t matter. This makes their marketing message more relevant to me than any TV commercial I have ever seen.

How do you prepare for a post-campaign marketing world?

The skills required from marketers will change. Data mining and optimization will become more important. Technology will drive more marketing dollars. Creative will always be important, but will have to become more flexible.

And the way you think about your brand will change too. Brands will become more conversational and rely more on earned media than paid media. Instead of thinking in campaigns, brands will think in terms of relationships.

Yet the fundamentals of your brand - the promise you make to your consumers - should stay the same. The end of the campaign should be an opportunity to make that more promise more meaningful to your consumers as you can customize its execution. It will be hard, but it will benefit consumers and brands alike it if is done properly.

Ben Wise

The easiest (well not real easy) way to get people to read is to send something that is personal.

I never cease to be amazed at the people who use the standard Linkedin "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." with no additional comment. Adding a simple, "Jim, we met at such and such show..." would go so far in making me click the connect.

Recently I have been promoting a book I contributed to called "Entrepreneurial Effect". I have been sending dozens of emails saying "Sue - I would appreciate your help by tweeting this...." (that is a blatant hint, please tweet it for me) And if I have something personal like "How is your son", I add that too.

So why is this not easy? It is, but is takes a lot of time. Personal emails often evoke personal responses that again need action. And just the time to personalize them can take a minute each so it is tough to do that to a 10,000 person list.

Being personal has a secondary advantage. I tend to develop and keep relationships with people that I personally correspond with.

The mail equivalent of this is the simple hand written note on the mailing. This is a highly effective technique for getting things read (and improving your handwriting muscles).

This is the age old marketing dilema. Quality (the personal touch) vs Quantity (worst case would be straight spam). Quality gets response (I get 80-90% of the people I send a personal email to, to respond) where just sending emails to a list often evokes only a 1-2% response. Personal can be 40-90 times as effective.

For true results - try personal.

Jim Estill

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.

Marketers needed an updated framework for understanding a changing industry, particularly with the increased use and effectiveness of online and digital media, a shift toward insights based marketing as well as changes in consumer preferences and access to information.

To accompany this new framework, CMA’s DM Council put together a series of best practice documents (13) that cover the most common channels and media found in a comprehensive marketing plan. These documents are concise and include only the most important learnings; the tried tested and true direct marketing practices, written by DM subject matter experts.

The best practices are organized into three sections:
1. The Basics (recently published on the CMA website) – covers Direct Marketing Analytics, Offers, Branding from a Direct Marketing perspective, Creative, and Privacy Management.

2. Media and Channels - focuses on both traditional and emerging DM channels: Email Marketing, Direct Mail, DR Media, and SEM.

3. Improving Effectiveness - helps direct marketers leverage the basics to their greatest effect with complimentary tactics like Contests, Word of Mouth Marketing, Community Involvement and Cross-selling.

The DM Council has brought these practices together in a “Direct Marketing Digest”. Our target audience? Those direct marketers early in their career.

The complete DM Digest will be distributed to all attendees at CMA's Direct Marketing Conference September 21 in Toronto. Come and get yours and/or pass it on to a junior on your team.

Martha Turner

Let’s face it. Direct Marketing has evolved. With the explosion of social networks, large-scale penetration of smart phones and increased investment overall in various different digital channels – the tools in a DM handbag have changed.

Response rates are lowering.
Privacy concerns are skyrocketing.
Email deliverability is decreasing.

What’s a Direct Marketer to do?

These are just a few of the issues that personally keep me wondering, researching and eternally trying to solve. Same goes for my colleagues in the Canadian Marketing Association’s Direct Marketing Council.

Our mandate is to report on trends and best practices across all one-to-one response generating channels including direct mail, print, online, email, DRTV and mobile. We look at the marketplace challenges and gather best in class solutions as well as keep our finger on the pulse of future opportunities.

In order to continue to provide education and leadership in the ever-changing world of Direct Response Marketing, we’d love your feedback.

What issues and trends do you think faces the modern Direct Marketer?
How can we help YOU address these challenges?

Let us know. We aim to please!

Robin Whalen

However, interest-based marketing still has two important limits of which you need to be aware.

Why are you interested?

The expression of a customer’s interest is usually done in 1-3 words. That is pretty concise. I don’t know about you, but I would have a lot of trouble explaining my interests in so few words. Therein lies the problem – people may share the keywords but still view their interests in a very different way.

Imagine people with an interest in blogging. They could:
? Read celebrity gossip blogs or financial analysis blogs
? Read blogs only or write their own blog
? Read multiple blogs every day or read one every few weeks
? Write a personal blog as a hobby or write a professional blog to earn a living

As you can see, the nature of someone’s interest in ‘blogging’ can vary immensely and you can’t tell the difference based on one or two words on their Facebook profile.
Interest-based marketing is doing better than traditional channels, but still needs some work to get to the level of detail and accuracy that would be most effective.

Are you sure those are your interests?

Any market researcher will tell you that what people say and what people do can be quite different. The ability to accurately articulate what you are interested in is a skill that surprisingly few people actually have.

These inaccuracies can lead you to market to the wrong people and/or miss the right people.

What is a brand to do?

Don’t get me wrong, interest-based marketing is a significant improvement but we are far from the Holy Grail. As a marketer, you need to continually test different target segments to make sure you are reaching the right people, don’t simply take their word for it!

Ben Wise

However, interest-based marketing still has two important limits of which you need to be aware.

Why are you interested?

The expression of a customer’s interest is usually done in 1-3 words. That is pretty concise. I don’t know about you, but I would have a lot of trouble explaining my interests in so few words. Therein lies the problem – people may share the keywords but still view their interests in a very different way.

Imagine people with an interest in blogging. They could:

• Read celebrity gossip blogs or financial analysis blogs
• Read blogs only or write their own blog
• Read multiple blogs every day or read one every few weeks
• Write a personal blog as a hobby or write a professional blog to earn a living

As you can see, the nature of someone’s interest in ‘blogging’ can vary immensely and you can’t tell the difference based on one or two words on their Facebook profile.
Interest-based marketing is doing better than traditional channels, but still needs some work to get to the level of detail and accuracy that would be most effective.

Are you sure those are your interests?

Any market researcher will tell you that what people say and what people do can be quite different. The ability to accurately articulate what you are interested in is a skill that surprisingly few people actually have.

These inaccuracies can lead you to market to the wrong people and/or miss the right people.

What is a brand to do?

Don’t get me wrong, interest-based marketing is a significant improvement but we are far from the Holy Grail. As a marketer, you need to continually test different target segments to make sure you are reaching the right people, don’t simply take their word for it!

Ben Wise

Marketers are sometimes torn between doing what has worked most effectively in the past and testing out new technologies and channels that have the potential to be real game-changers in the future.

The bright shiny object of the last few years is, of course, social media, a channel that’s still not completely understood but that has, in theory, the potential to radically change the way we market.

Why? Well, to start with, based on our research, influencers are spending 7 hours per week in the US and 9 in Canada on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs. That’s already impressive but when you add to that the finding that influencers are connected, on average, to 108 (US) and 137 (Canada) people in their own social media network, that’s something that gets the attention of marketers – as it should.

While social media shares ease of use with the email channel, it’s this community or network that may hold the key to the channel’s true potential. These individuals have chosen to be connected based on an affinity for a particular community, and are actively engaged with others in it and outside that community too.

Bill McCloskey at ClickZ offers some fascinating examples about the potential power of social media, including this one:

“…look at Marvel Comics, which is one of the top performing ‘advertisers’ in the Twitter space. As of right now, Marvel has around 44,000 followers [63,000+ as I write this post]. But over the last few weeks, it sent out 151 Twitter offers. But more than that: 246 ‘influencers’ have directly rebroadcast that message to their followers. Add it all up and Marvel has exposed its offer to over 66 million eyeballs over the past few weeks!”

Those are some impressive numbers and just a hint of the potential opportunities social media offers marketers. However we do need to distinguish the difference between influencers: some will talk; others will pass along information (as per above) and of utmost value are those that truly influence others – by eliciting action. So whether on social media sites or via email or on the phone, you must understand what you are trying to achieve and ensure that you have designed appropriately.

One more thing bares repeating from my last two posts: even if some channels are better than others to reach particular consumers in particular ways, the fact is these channels work best for marketers when they work together.

For instance, email messages that offer a social-sharing option (like Twitter and Facebook) generate a 30% higher click-through rate than emails without it, according to a new study by email marketing company Get Response. And if the email includes three or more social-sharing options, that click-through rate jumps to 55%.

The bottom line? Social media offers a unique and advantageous opportunity to find, reach, engage and have a continuous dialogue with individuals – both within their social media communities and in their network at large. Just needs to be done right!

In the fourth and final part of this series, I’ll blog about the true answer to the question – which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers?

Gillian MacPherson

Which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers to spread the word about your product? In this second of four posts, I take a look at email.

In part 1, I blogged about some of the reasons marketers still consider direct mail an effective way to reach influencers, but the truth is that was only part of the story. Because while DM still has a role to play in engaging influencers to spread the word about your brand, email is also a powerful channel and one that’s becoming more so all the time.

There are, of course, the obvious reasons email is so effective: it’s easy for consumers to forward – a sort of digital word of mouth – and, especially these days, it’s easily accessible whether you’re on your BlackBerry, iPhone, Mac or PC, at home, at work or on the run.

An email campaign may also be cheaper and less labour-intensive to launch: although these days consumers report opening up less of the vast amount of emails received so perhaps cheaper is an illusion. But we do know that recent technology has made targeting, tracking and offer redemption much easier than in the past.

Perhaps where email marketing can be most successful at reaching consumers and convincing influencers is in its interactivity. You can include a url link to your website or blog or Facebook page in which the consumer can immediately connect. And of course you can design an email to offer a level of animation to engage the senses.

Plus, based on a study we just conducted, people have very specific reasons why they like to be marketed via email, including:

• Speed: It’s in your inbox – or in your trash – in a flash
• Convenience: You can read it at work, at home, or anywhere in between
• Environmental: Unless you want to print it out to save or share, trees and our environment get a break

That said, the truth is DM and email can live with each other because they both have an important role to play, as ClickSquared’s Dan Smith explains:

Not all customers respond to communications in the same way… In certain industries – charities come to mind – direct mail remains the primary method for new donor acquisition. Email is used primarily to solicit renewals from existing donors – and in the absence of a response, is often followed by yet another direct mail piece.

The circle of life – marketing style.

In part 3 of this series, I’ll focus on the new kid on the block – social media.

Thoughts?

Gillian MacPhersen

When VCRs achieved mass-market success in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many pundits predicted the demise of the movie theatre. Who would want to drive to a cinema and sit with a bunch of strangers to watch a new movie when you could now do it in your own living room or bedroom? A lot of people, it turned out. VCRs, then DVD players and other home movie systems, didn’t kill off old school movie-going. They simply created a new channel for Hollywood to market its product. Both have lived together quite successfully ever since.

The same, it turns out, has happened with direct mail. Pioneered on a mass scale in the 1950s by Lester Wunderman and others, this way of reaching consumers and businesses caught on with marketers because, unlike traditional print, billboard and broadcast advertising, direct mail’s effectiveness could be tested, measured and improved on in subsequent campaigns. Despite the advent of email marketing in the 1990s and social marketing today, marketers still consider direct mail a viable and effective way to engage consumers in general and influencers in particular.

Why? Well, for starters, there continues to be a segment of the population that likes to receive things in the mail. While I’m selective about what I like and don’t like to find in my mailbox – I’m not big on grocery flyers, for instance – I do like when I get useful information about products or services that I can hold right in my hands.

I’m not alone and marketers know it. After all, with 90% of word-of-mouth happening face-to-face (Keller Fay Study, 2010), marketers understand the usefulness of offering influencers something tangible they can carry in their purse or pocket and pass along to the friends and family members they’re influencing – like a brochure, a catalogue, even a business card with a name, email address or url printed on it.

And direct mail is also still the king of easy and accurate personalization, in spite of digital marketing’s advances. Plus it continues to beat traditional media in its ability to target industries, regions, niche markets and other highly specific local audiences.

Finally, as effective as marketing via email, Facebook or mobile may be, none has (yet) managed to beam a sample or gift into consumers’ homes without using direct mail to get it there. The tactile surprise and delight factor that direct mail offers highly engaged consumers cannot be underestimated. You know they’ll open it immediately and pay particular attention to the contents from a brand they know and trust.

In part 2 of this series, I’ll focus on direct mail’s spry marketing cousin: email. It’s fast and inexpensive, but is it influencing influencers? Tune in next time when we discuss...

Gillian MacPhersen

Today, a more efficient and cost-effective trend is taking shape, thanks in large part to online forums and the advent of other social media tools – and one that’s right up the alley of influencers who want to be more engaged and share their thoughts and ideas. Some companies are pro-actively inviting influencers to be part of the early product development phase. Why? They’ve realized it’s a great opportunity to include the consumers most involved with the brand and the category, enlisting them to create ideas and rate them.

The concept is straightforward: get your most involved consumers to submit ideas and rate potential new products. Ideally, you get a couple of key benefits: (i) better ideas flow through as they’ve already been vetted by knowledgeable consumers; (ii) time to market can be much faster because you can get info quickly and react faster, especially if you’re working online; (iii) potentially the amount of data or feedback you get can be greater than a few focus groups, making it more reliable.

Plus, the earlier customers – and especially committed influencers – have their say, the more likely a launched product will resonate and succeed with a wider target audience.

Here are just two examples of companies doing this well:

My Starbucks Idea blog for instance, offers Starbucks lovers the chance to share their coffee culture ideas and vote thumbs up or down on the ideas of other customers.

And Dell’s hugely successful IdeaStorm, asks customers to share ideas on the kinds of products they’d like to see Dell develop – 10,000 ideas have been generated through the site in three years and nearly 400 have been implemented so far.

To put it simply, where once the product was the focus of product development, today customers (and their ideas) are. And, it turns out, when customers are given the wheel, they’re more engaged with the brand, respond more positively to the company and talk more about the product.

Or as Paul Rand, President of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) puts it:

“Brands that actively listen and engage, on a sustainable basis, with their customers, consumers and influencers – from product development through social media and customer service – have learned the power and return of being talkable.”

Getting influencers involved and talking early can make all the difference.

What have you heard about using influencers to drive product development? I’ve got to believe more brands are doing it, but few are publicizing it.

Gillian MacPherson