From Marketing Sherpa, chart of the week:

The vast majority of B2B organizations find direct mail to be either very effective or somewhat effective for their organization. This is likely a result of the various personalization and segmentation capabilities organizations executing this tactic now have, such as personalization for name, location and other data points and segmenting lists based on a number of criteria.
Organizations of all sizes found direct mail to be a very effective tactic. One-quarter of organizations with fewer than 100 employees viewed the use of direct mail in this light; 19% of mid-sized organizations and 21% of large organizations also considered direct mail to be a very effective tactic.

Organizations in the business services sector are the most likely to find direct mail very effective, with 34% of business services organizations assigning this rating. This may be an indication that organizations in the business services sector are also the most efficient in their execution of this tactic.

Only 13% of organizations in the business technology sector find direct mail to be a very effective marketing tactic. Many of these organizations need to communicate complex feature sets and capabilities to their target audience, which may not easily be achieved without causing confusion through a direct mail piece.

Saw this post on Chief Business Marketer, and thought it spoke to what a lot of my clients are looking at:

From Print In The Mix:

February 1, 2010 — Pitney Bowes surveyed 4,000 B2B marketers — divided equally throughout the US, UK, France, and Germany – to uncover current B2B thinking regarding marketing channel choice and business communications in today’s complex and challenging communication environment.

The survey finds:

• An average of 50% of B2B companies in the US and 53% across the UK, France and Germany (EU) report it increasingly difficult to reach and influence customers as a result of media fragmentation.

• Examining stand-alone and multichannel B2B marketing efforts for generating business:

• Direct mail comes out as the top stand-alone channel.

In the US, 19% of companies feel that stand-alone direct mail generates the most business for them.  In the EU, 12% of companies report this.

• In comparison to stand-alone direct mail, 10% of US companies favor solo e-mail campaigns

(8% EU) and 7% rely on stand-alone search engine marketing (6% EU).

• In contrast, more respondents favor integrated marketing as the best approach: 30% of US firms cited a combination of mail, email and web campaigns as generating the most business for them (27% EU).

• B2B marketers recognize the enhanced effectiveness of combining traditional and digital channels — 58% of US firms and 53% of EU firms feel that concentrating solely on electronic media would seriously damage their ability to generate leads.

About:  4,000 B2B decision makers surveyed (1,000  in the US, UK, France, Germany).  Respondents balanced by company size, location.  Survey conducted online, 2010.

Source:  WhatTheyThink, Pitney Bowes launches free white paper series, February 1, 2010.

from Print in the Mix:

Saw this article this morning at Digital Nirvana and I thought that it raised some great points -

By Heidi Tolliver-Nigro on February 8th, 2011

There has been a lot of chatter about email vs. direct mail lately, and for good reason. Email is cheap. Email provides instant gratification. Email campaigns can be deployed at the push of a button.

It is no wonder that marketers love email. In fact, according to StrongMail’s 2011 Marketing Trends Report, 65% of businesses are planning to increase their spend on email marketing this year compared to 18% that are planning to increase their spend on direct mail.

So here’s the question. Next time one of your clients tells you they are cutting back on print in favor of email, what are you going to say? (Or do you simply watch  their print volumes disappear without asking any questions?) Do you have a response prepared?

If not, here are a few thoughts you might want to have at the ready:

• Email has a high value for communicating with existing customers, but for prospecting, nothing beats direct mail.
• Email lists are notoriously unreliable. They cannot be checked beforehand, so their quality only becomes known after you’ve pushed “send.”
• Email lists go out of date quickly. People change addresses at the drop of a hat.
• People have multiple email addresses (even dummy addresses to avoid marketers like you), but they typically only have one home.
• Many people use their work email as their primary address; consequently, your communication faces the relentless, often over-zealous corporate spam filter.
• Consumers’ home addresses don’t have a spam filter.
• Email generates immediate response, but print has a longer shelf life. Recipients often respond to direct mail weeks or even months after it arrives in their home.
• Print has a gravitas that email does not. This makes it preferred for financial, medical, and other communications of a more serious and confidential nature.
• You have to touch direct mail in order to “delete” it.

Email has many benefits. So does direct mail. One is not necessarily better than another. Marketers simply need to understand their value and use them in symbiosis, not in competition. But they may not think of that on their own. When you find out they’ve shrunk their print budget in favor of email, will you stand there dumbfounded? Or will you have a response ready?

Saw this article this morning, and made me realize that print is still playing a major role in recovery.
- Steve
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By Chantal Tode on January 14th, 2011

I came across this report this morning, and found it interesting especially when thinking about all the time, money and resources companies are putting into their social media budgets to attract this exact audience.

- Steve

From: Epslion

North American Survey Results Show 2-1 and 3-1 Offline Preference Margin, Depending On Product

DALLAS, August 24, 2010 – Six years after the launch of Facebook, North American consumers in the valued 18-34 year-old demographic prefer by a wide margin to learn about marketing offers via postal mail and newspapers rather than online sources such as social media platforms, according to national survey research from ICOM, a division of Epsilon Targeting.

Additionally, the ICOM research shows that preferential attitudes about the trustworthiness of mail strengthened for consumer respondents in all age groups from 2008 to 2010.The 2010 study of 2569 U.S. households and 2209 Canadian households focused on consumer preferences in regard to the ever-expanding array of communications channels for the delivery of marketing information, offers and promotions. Responses came from consumers ranging in age from 18 to 55 and above.

By the numbers, here are some of the key results from ICOM’s 2010 study of North American consumers’ marketing communication channel preferences –

For household and health products, the preference among 18-34 year-olds for receiving marketing information from offline sources led by mail and newspapers is 2 to 3 times greater than online sources such as social media. Examples of consumer preferences for offline versus online are:

Travel was the exception, where 18-34 year-olds preferred online to offline information by a 42% to 35% margin, however, Insurance and Financial Services followed the overall trend, with the 18-34 age group preferring offline sources 43% to 21% and 44% to 19%, respectively.

The trust pendulum is swinging in the direction of mail for survey takers in all age brackets:

36% of US respondents in 2010 said information is more private if sent through the mail vs. email or online, up from 29% in 2008; corresponding responses in Canada were 38% and 35%

25% of US respondents in 2010 said a lot of online information can’t be trusted, up from 19% in 2008; corresponding responses in Canada were 28% and 24%

20% of US respondents in 2010 said they trust information received by mail more than online, up from 12% in 2008; corresponding responses in Canada were 25% and 18%.

For health information, consumers favor doctors and nurses (80% US, 83% Canada), but for general products they rank as most trustworthy friends and family (57% US, 52% Canada), newspapers (26% US, 26% Canada), company web sites (22% US, 20% Canada), television (20% US, 21% Canada) and brochures and flyers (18% US, 18% Canada). The numbers for social media sites, by comparison, were Facebook (8% US, 6% Canada), YouTube (7% US, 5% Canada) and Twitter (7% US, 5% Canada).

“A key takeaway from this research is that marketers targeting coveted 18-34 year olds who are tempted to invest solely in social media could be missing a significant portion of their audience,” said ICOM, a division of Epsilon Targeting Vice President Warren Storey.

“For example, a consumer goods company that relies heavily on a female audience, especially moms, could fall short of expectations if it uses only the social media channel,” Storey said. “Companies need to employ a multi-channel approach to gain maximum engagement with their customers.”

Other key findings from ICOM’s survey about channel preferences include the following:

45% of US men and 35% of Canadian men do not have any social media accounts, 36% of US women and 31% of Canadian women do not have any social media accounts

25% of respondents, US and Canadian, said they get more postal mail versus a year ago; 72% US and 66% Canadian said they get more email versus a year ago

In both the US and Canada, women are more likely than men to prefer addressed or unaddressed mail for many product categories, and men are more likely to prefer the Internet or email as a mode of receiving marketing information.

The factors driving consumers to certain channels – according to the ICOM research are trust, convenience, richness and relevance of information and environmental concerns.

“The finding that only 25% of respondents perceive they’re getting more postal mail compared to a year ago, while nearly three times that amount say they’re getting more email is telling, and signals to marketers there is an opportunity to gain key consumers’ attention and interest by using the direct mail channel,” Storey said.

“Overall, our research confirms the proliferation of channel choices but shows that a unique combination or balance of favored channels needs to be identified, and that combination likely includes direct mail and other offline options, despite the notion by some that offline is no longer effective,” he said.

More in-depth information about ICOM’s channel preference research is available in a report titled “Finding the Right Channel Combination: What Drives Channel Choice.” Click here to view this report.

I stumbled upon the following post this morning, written by the Ad Contrarian, it points out some very real facts that often times get omitted in the decision making process of marketing departments et al. While it doesn’t speak directly to Direct mail, it does in my opinion point to the fact that mail, while considered by some to be “old-school” is still quantifiable and viable.

enjoy -

steve

Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising

As all AdContras know, the marketing and advertising industries have been hijacked by web-addled digi-maniacs who don’t know a fact from a fart.

Those of us who like to operate our businesses on the basis of facts, not “buzz”‘ and baloney, are in an ongoing state of war with web marketing hustlers and their endless feedback loop of misleading information.

So, as a service to my loyal, long-suffering AdContras, I have put together the Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising. It is a little crib-sheet to help you fight the forces of ignorance and trendiness wherever you may find them.

Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising

1 ) 99.9% of people who are served an online display ad do not click on it.

2 ) TV viewership is now at its highest point ever.

3 ) 96% of all retail activity is done in a store. 4% is done on line.

4 ) DVR owners watch live TV 95% of the time. 5% of the time they watch recorded material.

5 ) 99% percent of all video viewing is done on a television. 1% is done on line.

6 ) The difference in purchasing behavior between people who use DVRs to skip ads and those who don’t: None.

7 ) Since the 1990s, click-through rates for banner ads have dropped 97.5%.

8 ) Since the introduction of TiVo, real time TV viewing has increased over 20%.

9 ) Baby boomers dominate 94% of all consumer packaged goods categories. 5% of advertising is aimed at them.

10 ) TV viewers are no more likely to leave the room during a commercial break than they are before or after the break.

If you would like to print a nice, clean copy of this list and pin it up on your boss’s wall, you can find it here.

Here are my sources:

1. DoubleClick, Benchmark Report, 2009

2. Nielsen Three Screen Report, Q1 2010

3. U.S. Department of Commerce, Q2 2010; Nielsen Three Screen Report, Q1 2010

4. Duke University, Do DVRs Influence Sales?

5. Nielsen Three Screen Report, Q1 2010

6. Duke University, Do DVRs Influence Sales?

7. Li, Hairong; Leckenby, John D. (2004). “Internet Advertising Formats and Effectiveness”. Center for Interactive Advertising. And DoubleClick, Benchmark Report, 2009

8. NielsenWire, Nov. 10, 2009

9. Marketing Daily,  July 22, 2010

10. Council for Research Excellence, May 10, 2010

(from Digital Nirvana)

By Michael Paladini, Director of Analytics, Wilde Agency

It’s no secret that all of us in marketing are under increasing pressure to show results. Every marketing effort and expense must be quantified and justified. However, sometimes the numbers aren’t what they seem. Higher response rates don’t always mean better results. Conversion rates don’t always tell the whole story. And average order value can be misleading. So how can you make sure your programs receive the credit they are due?

Let’s take two direct marketing campaigns in the same industry, selling the same kind of product or service, both with a target audience of 100,000 people. The first has a response rate of 1.2%, the second a response of 1.5%. The second one is better with the 1.5% response, right?

Not necessarily. Suppose the campaign is two-step. That means the initial responses are just leads that now must go through the sales process.

The 1,200 leads from the first campaign go into a process that converts a third of them to customers, while the 1,500 leads from the second see only a 20% conversion. So the first one produces 400 customers, while the second produces 300. Now the first campaign, the one wit the lower response rate, is in fact better because it delivered more qualified leads. Right?

Maybe not. The 400 customers had an average order value, or AOV, of only $400. But the 300 had an AOV of $600. So it looks like the first mailing generated only $160,000 in revenue (400 x $400), while the second generated $180,000 (300 x $600). Okay, so now we’ve got it. The second campaign is better after all!

Ah, let’s not be too hasty. Because it turns out that those 400 sales in fact encompassed 450 products or about 1.13 products per customer. In fact, it was each product that had an AOV of $400. Meanwhile, the 300 customers from our second campaign indeed represented only 300 sales. So we really got $180,000 from the first mailing after all (450 items x $400). It turns out that both campaigns are the same!

Or are they? Because we haven’t even discussed the profit margin on the products or services sold, downstream purchases, any effects of non-payment on some customers’ part, the impact of referrals, the relative cost of the original campaigns, and so on.

In the end, it’s not a matter of response rate, conversion rate, AOV, or any one metric alone. It’s about the metric that wraps them all together, ROI:what did we earn in profits, for what we spent.

You’ve surely heard the famous remark that only three things matter in real estate: location, location, location. Similarly, in direct response, the three most important metrics are ROI, ROIand ROI. Marketing’s ultimate goal should be to deliver as much revenue as profitably as possible. And that involves managing a host of mathematical interactions that we must manage from start to finish.

Personalized URL’s, PURLS, Cross Media, Linked Printing – no matter what you call them, they have been the promoted as the next wave in direct mail – finally a way to increase response rates, and interact with consumers.

Personally, I am enthralled with the technology, so much so that I was an early adapter and promoter of it. I went with the MindFire solution as it was, at the time, the most cost effective and the most robust turn-key solution I could find. I promoted the heck out of it – did all sort of very successful self promotions (with an average response rate of 16%). But, whenever I got in front of a client – it was nearly impossible to sell. Not due to the technology, but more so the cost of entry (obviously, for a well executed campaign, it will cost significantly more that just a post card). Clients loved the THEORY of it, but before they signed up – they wanted to see case studies. They wanted to see a quantified ROI. And, when a client had success, the last thing they wanted to do was to share that information with a competitor (even if a different vertical. Would you?).

This post from Print in the Mix finally puts some numbers behind the technology – and the numbers are good, with some verticals seeing a response rate (people visiting their PURL) of over 74%.

The Response Rates of Personalized Cross-Media Marketing Campaigns

MindFireInc®

Date: 2009

Author: Dr. Marnie Brow, University of California, Irvine

Type of Promotional Material/Activity Tested:

The response rates of personalized cross-media campaigns, — including print direct mail campaigns featuring personalized URLs (PURLs).

Sample:

A random selection of 670 cross-media campaigns across 27 vertical markets drawn from MindFireInc’s large database of media campaigns (more than 550 companies and 3,200 users worldwide use MindFireInc marketing intelligence software and services to manage thousands of marketing campaigns).

For an unbiased analysis of actual campaign results, the database was sorted according to certain criteria (e.g., sufficient number of recipients in a campaign; no internal MindFireInc campaigns) and includes a 2009 timeframe to capture the most up-to-date information.

Methodology:

Analysis of performance data (website visit rates, response rates) from select customized, personalized cross-media marketing campaigns.

For the 670 campaigns analyzed, the overall average and median response rate results:

Visit rate: The percent of total number of recipients who visited the PURL sent to them via the campaign.

Response Rate: Percent of total recipients who responded (submitted their info) upon visiting the PURL sent to them.

Median: The middle number (in a sorted list of numbers). Half the numbers are less, and half the numbers are greater.

Overall results across campaigns/verticals studied (95% confidence interval):

Interpretation: Results for 95% of campaigns will fall within these ranges (not that a company’s campaign will achieve these results 95% of the time).

The industries that saw the highest number of people to whom their marketing campaign material was sent visit their personalized URL (PURL):

The industries that saw the highest the number of visitors to a PURL who performed the desired action (e.g., submitted information) on the website:

The average response rate across all industries with 10 or more campaigns was 6.5%.

Note:  The Response Rates of Personalized Cross-Media Marketing Campaigns report discussed here also reviews pertinent content from three recent reports from the DMA, PODi, and the CMO Council on direct marketers’ attitudes about personalization, their business practices, and campaign results.  Readers here are encouraged to download the report to read more as how they relate to the original research conducted by Dr. Brow.

Take-Away: From the Executive Summary:  “In the last few years, customized, personalized marketing campaigns have been posting strong results compared with traditional, static campaign styles. Regardless of industry or business descriptive, well-designed and well-executed personalized marketing campaigns clearly demonstrate their ability to outpace the competition. This report provides a look at some of the data and conclusions that support that claim.”

Complexity rating of original source:  1 (Complex statistical analysis scale:  1= none, 2= moderate, 3 = difficult)

>> MindFireInc’s The Response Rates of Personalized Cross-Media Marketing Campaigns report is freely available for download (registration required) <<