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Archive for June, 2010

Direct Mail Has Several Advantages Over Newer Forms of Marketing

Editor’s Note: Today’s post was written by Mark Hasland and originally appeared on the Overnight Prints blog. It is reprinted here with permission.

With the internet easily accessible to more than 200 million Americans, marketing trends are increasingly shifting to digital. However, even in today’s web-dependent world, direct mail still plays an integral role in reaching new audiences.

This contrast can most clearly be seen in the political realm. While President Barack Obama used social media platforms, like YouTube and Facebook, to connect with many Americans, countless other politicians utilize direct mail to appeal to potential voters.

This is the case with many of this year’s gubernatorial campaigns for candidates in Minnesota. Members of both Democratic Farmers Labor and Independence parties are launching direct mail campaigns leading up to the August 10th primaries, reports Politics in Minnesota.

“If you’re looking at the different mediums to talk to voters, by far the most effective is direct voter contact, door to door and on the phones. Direct mail fits into that as well, because it’s a very targeted message to specific voters,” Jaime Tincher, campaign manager for DFL’s Margaret Kelliher.

Targeting largely factors into why direct mail is so popular among many candidates. Direct mail allows campaigners to target certain demographics with relevant messages, maximizing the impact a message can have among distinct groups.

In addition to that, direct mail can also target specific voters, creating personal connections that broadcast marketing often can’t generate. With direct mail, campaigners can reduce the amount of marketing dollars spent on people that are likely not to vote and more efficiently target those who will.

Because it’s such a direct platform, many candidates also use mail for fundraising initiatives. With the exception of holding an event with the candidate in attendance, direct mail is the best way of finding people that agree with a position that would make a contribution, says Tincher.

Expense is another large part of why direct mail is so popular among politicians. Direct mail is a fraction of the price of television campaigns. While a TV message could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, direct mail initiatives are often no more than a few thousand dollars.

So what can a savvy small business owner take away from these politicians? There are certain advantages that physical envelopes and brochures have over intangible digital messages. Direct mail can often be used to create personal relationships and cement a brand’s reputation among consumers. Additionally, targeting different segments of potential customers with specific messages is also an advantage that direct mail has over other channels, like TV.

At Dukky, we recognize that both direct mail and digitial marketing have unique advantages. In our view, an integrated approach is the way to go because it provides marketers with the best of both worlds.

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Will Social Networking Replace Email?

Is email about to go the way of the dodo bird? Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg thinks so. When she spoke at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference earlier this week, she told the audience, “If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today…E-mail–I can’t imagine life without it–is probably going away.” (via FastCompany).

That’s a bold statement. For support, she turned to a Pew Study that looked at the communication habits of teenagers and found that only 11% of them used email daily. Teens are much more likely to use text messaging, instant messaging, social networking sites and even the telephone to communicate with others.

But does that mean that social networking will replace email anytime soon? My Magic 8-Ball says “Outlook not so good.” The results of a recent study by ExactTarget and CoTweet indicate that email still holds an important place in the lives of many US consumers. In fact, over 58% of US consumers with Internet access start their mornings off by checking email. Only 11% check Facebook first thing.

Email is also the most common way for companies and brands to connect with customers. According to ExactTarget, 93% of online consumers subscribe to emails from the companies they patronize, receiving one or more permission-based marketing emails per day. In contrast, 43% of consumers either “Like” a brand on Facebook or follow one on Twitter.

The other thing is that all of those teenagers who don’t use email on a daily basis today may well start using it more when they get a little bit older and their life circumstances change. As Good Morning Silicon Valley notes:

“The problem with that is that those teens, who for now lead mostly carefree lives with no bills to pay, and who have time for face-to-face interaction, will eventually grow up. For now, they have no professional need for e-mail. But they will, and they will find that it generally isn’t wise to reveal details about a work project via commenting on Facebook.”

However, that doesn’t mean that marketers can afford to ignore social media in favor of email. Social networking sites continue to grow in reach, frequency of use and importance, especially among younger adults. For example, another recent study by Nielsen notes that 22% of all time spent online is spent on social networking sites, and the average visitor to a social networking site spends 66% more time there than last year.

Also, social networking fans are more likely to engage with and share content from a brand they’ve connected with. ExactTarget notes that people who visit Facebook first thing in the morning are more likely to engage with brands for purely social reasons than are people who visit email first. However, the overwhelming majority of consumers in both categories listed “promotions and deals” as their top reason for seeking interaction with brands online.

Fortunately, there’s no need to choose one or the other. For most marketers, the wisest move is to create campaigns that incorporate both email and social media to achieve the greatest possible reach and effectiveness.

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Tweeting Away “This Commercial Break”

When companies buy advertising space during a major television event, they are supposedly paying a premium for viewers’ attention. But we viewers have never liked having our attention bought and sold-it’s been a cat-and-mouse game to get us to actually watch commercials since the invention of the remote control in 1950. Interesting fact, by the way-the remote control was invented by Zenith Radio Corporation’s engineering team expressly for the purpose of providing an escape hatch from commercials.

Now, as MediaPost’s George Simpson has noted, it seems that social media may have provided us with yet another way to deprive TV advertisers of our attention. The conclusion of Lost, for example, spawned 437,613 tweets, and the number of tweets sent spiked during every commercial break. Simpson observes:

This probably gives a little heartburn to the media buyers who bought time on the finale (probably at a premium, since the ratings were expected to be high — if you can call under 14 million viewers high any more). Moreover, only about 200,000 viewers watched the big ending from start to finish. Most were too busy thumbing their cell phones to look up at the commercials.

Simpson doesn’t understand why anyone would want to tweet about “Lost” to begin with, but of course if you paid any attention to the show at all (or had friends who did), you know that half the fun was trying to decode Lost’s sprawling, incomprehensible mythology, an activity best undertaken with a group of other like-minded fans. Twitter provided Lost geeks with the opportunity to discuss the show with an entire Twitterverse of fellow fans during commercial breaks, inadvertently depriving media buyers of their eyeballs.

There is a lesson to be learned here: Certain traditional marketing tactics are becoming less and less powerful as consumers become better and better at screening them out.

Used wisely, social media gives you an opportunity to create an experience that’s more interactive and draws your customers in without annoying them. It can also be a great place to harness the power of word of mouth. People appreciate getting recommendations from their family, friends and other social networking connections, so these have more power than all but the catchiest TV jingle.

While there are very few companies that can get by on social media alone, integrating it into your existing marketing mix gives you a powerful tool to help you connect with your customers- especially the ones who head for Twitter when the commercials start!

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Social Media Gives Consumers a Microphone to Broadcast Their Opinions About Brands…And They’re Using It!

In our consumption-oriented society, people love to talk about brands. This isn’t a new thing-we’ve been defining ourselves by what we buy and where we shop for decades. However, the rise of social media has given consumers a new venue to share their opinions and experiences about their favorite brands and products. It also acts as a microphone, amplifying individual customer voices and allowing their opinions to influence more people than they would have been able in a less connected world.

The results of a new Harris poll released last week show that consumers have been using social media to broadcast their opinions, both positive and negative, about the brands they are familiar with. Adweek notes that 34% of the people surveyed said that they use social media to “rant or rave about a company, brand or product.”

Fortunately for marketers and PR folks, social media aficionados seem to be about as equally inclined to use social media to praise brands they like as they are to use them to vent about brands they dislike. No doubt you’ve heard the saying “a happy customer tells one friend, an unhappy customer tells everybody?” That old adage doesn’t seem to be quite as true when it comes to social media, at least not if the customers themselves are to be believed.

Adweek reports that an almost equal number of consumers (23%) use social media to plug brands that they like as use it to vent about brands they don’t like (26%). No doubt you can think of at least a few instances where social media was used to punish a brand on a scale that would have been all but impossible without social media (United Breaks Guitars, anyone? Or how about Nestle?), so it’s reassuring to see proof that consumers are also willing to use their newfound power to reward brands that make a positive impression on them.

Another interesting nugget from the poll: 45% of respondents said that opinions from their social media connections influence their purchasing decisions. As you might expect, younger respondents gave greater weight to opinions encountered through social media: 50% of respondents age 18 to 34 found them to exert “a great deal” or “a fair amount” influence.” For respondents 55 and older, only 37% said that social media was influential.

Statistics like these demonstrate why it is vital to get people saying good things about your company on social media. At Dukky, we understand how important it is to generate positive word of mouth, which is why our platform encourages customers to share your offer on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. We also track the responses to those shares, so you can identify your biggest brand advocates and reward them accordingly.

What steps are you taking to encourage positive conversations about your brand?

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