DUKKY

by Kristen Sullivan | June 17, 2009

Balancing content, engagement and management is key to finding the social media sweet spot, writes John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, a blog for small businesses. During an online webinar earlier today, Jantsch went on to say that making sure your business objectives are driving each of these three elements is essential.

I know, I know, a “social media webinar” sounds like a time-suck. But I’m a fan of Jantsch and Duct Tape Marketing so I gave it a shot. I have a feeling that a lot of marketers who focus on direct mail campaigns did not.

Big mistake for them.

The same approaches that make a social media campaign successful are also essential to a direct mail campaign today. And while these concepts are seemingly obvious to anyone who knows anything about social media or direct mail – it’s easy to get distracted and forget them. So here’s a quick reminder. Read up:

Content: Create content that represents the story and reputation of your company. Most importantly, make sure that content is primarily focused on driving readers back to your company.

In the social media world, this means having a strong call to action that drives people to your hub of information – probably your website.

With direct mail, this means creating a compelling offer that’s aligned with your business goals and drives people to your physical store or to your website. Your mailer must clearly indicate what the reader should do next: take advantage of your offer.

Most people working in direct mail understand the importance of having a good offer. Here’s where it starts to get interesting: think about how you can use the two elements detailed below, engagement and management, to improve your content and in turn your redemption rates.

Engagement: Connect with the right people. Listen and speak to them.

The path to social media nirvana is as follows:
Step 1.) Find the right community;
Step 2.) Listen; Speak; Give back;
Step 3.) Receive.

We all know that with direct mail, Step One is critical: it’s all about your list. Sure it is. The list ensures you get your content in the right hands. But thanks to today’s technology, your work isn’t over once your list is in order.

Advances like personalized URLs allow you to build a deeper relationship with recipients. Now you can ask them questions and ask for feedback once they visit your site. What if you printed your Twitter name right on the mailer? There are lots of ways to merge the offline and online worlds and engage. In doing so, you start gathering individual feedback versus letting ROI be your only indicator that a certain segment or offer tested well. Your campaign is no longer just about tracking, but about intelligence.

So let recipients talk back to you after you contact them. You might just get to Step Three.

Management: Create an automated system that lets you measure the success of your campaign.

There are many new tools out there that help social media nerds efficiently manage their online lives and work. (Jantsh mentioned: TweetDeck, Google Alerts, Trackur.) The beauty of these tools is that they not only track how many people listened to you (a la bit.ly) they also let you see who is speaking back to you and what they are saying.

Guess what? There are lots of new tools that let direct marketers do the same. The days of waiting weeks to figure out how many customers walked in the store with your coupon are long gone. Now you can track the success of your campaigns in real-time. More importantly, you can do much more that track. If you engage correctly, you can gather and analyze individual feedback. New technologies don’t just provide access to more information, they provide access to more instructive information.

The key is identifying the tools that will save you the most time and give you the most information that will help you meet your business objectives. Faster is good. Faster and smarter is better.

Search #vsbc to follow the Twitter thread that Jantsch’s webinar produced.