Cross Media marketing for the Little Guy

Tweet Any business owner knows about economies of scale – the increase in efficiency of production that occurs as the number of goods being produced increases.  Typically, a company that achieved economies of scale lowers the average cost per unit through increased production since fixed costs are shared over an increased number of goods.

Economies of scale bring down the costs of all sorts of things, like printing and mailing if you are a large national corporation or nonprofit organization. 

But what if you are a little guy? Little guys still have profit margins and marketing goals to meet and along with those, the need for affordable marketing solutions.

Thanks to advancements in technology, direct mail driven cross media campaigns can be an affordable solution for small businesses and nonprofits.

Cross media campaigns reach an audience via traditional offline and online channels including direct mail, e-mail, personalized URLs (pURLs), landing pages, QR codes, and mobile messaging.  They feature personalized, relevant, and highly targeted messages.

Acculink is now the primary manufacturer of the InteliMailer formally called Transformailer.  This product transforms marketing messages into a complete cross media marketing campaign.  The InteliMailer offers small businesses and nonprofit organizations a unique way to increase response rates and achieve their marketing goals. 

According to a study by InfoTrends, marketers reported response rates of 20 - 35% when using cross media marketing campaigns over single channel print or email campaigns.   In addition, marketers reported an average lift of 50% in response rates using personalized, relevant and highly targeted cross media campaigns over static print-only campaigns.

Other research shows that combining direct mail with pURLs and well-designed landing pages, as well as QR codes and mobile messaging means higher response rates.  With the InteliMailer employing cross media marketing techniques, we are seeing lifts of 35 – 50% in response rates.  We are able to achieve this by offering a unique direct mail piece that gets noticed, opened, and acted upon thereby multiplying the results even further with personalization and variable data and then tapping into the power of the WEB and mobile marketing.

Until now, creating full color, personalized direct mail letter packages tied to cross media campaigns has been a time consuming and expensive undertaking.  Only large companies with big budgets could afford it.

With InteliMailer, now small businesses and nonprofits can send incredibly effective letter packages supported by pURLS, landing pages, WEB sites, and even mobile messaging in small quantities without any extra work and for only a few cents more than a postcard or self-mailer.

Because the InteliMailer can be produced in many versions, it is very versatile.  It can be a simple letter and outer envelope, both personalized and in full color. It can just be the outer envelope personalized with variable maps, coupons, or other relevant content without any inside sheets.   It may contain up to three personalized sheets and a reply envelope or reply card inside the outer envelope.  A membership card, affinity or loyalty card can also be part of the InteliMailer.  It can be produced in many different versions depending upon its intended use.

Unlike static marketing campaigns, the InteliMailer is supported by integrated on-line and mobile media.  It can be precision targeted, highly relevant, and personalized to a smaller list while yielding higher results than mailing to a much larger list.

For more information or samples please contact Ed Glaser, CMO at Acculink.  He can be reached at (252)321-5805 or at ed.glaser@acculink.com.

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 4

Tweet Today we bring you part four of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

Seven tips for improving your email design

In its white paper “Email Design No-Nos Guide for Nondesigners¹”, online marketing solutions provider Lyris offers advice on making sure your email graphics and design lift, rather than depress, response:

· Bear in mind that graphics are often blocked. That doesn’t mean you have to resort to text-only messages. But “when reviewing email layouts ask the designer to show two versions—one with images visible and one with the images blocked. Both need to work equally well,” Lyris suggests.

· Also bear in mind that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) do not work with all email clients. Outlook 2007 and Gmail, for instance, ignore CSS coding created on an external file and linked to the email. Unless you use Inline CSS to format your design, your emails may not render correctly in all email clients.

· Use your alt tag copy to sell. Alt tags are the HTML code that provides alternative text (hence the name) for images that cannot be displayed. “Many marketers settle for alt tag copy that simply tells the reader how to turn the images on. In today’s environment, you can rest assured that most email users know how to do this. Instead, why not consider giving the customer a benefit to turning the image on to see what it is? Try describing the product if the image is a picture of something for sale. Or selling the event or service through copy if the image is not product-related.”

· Don’t make your call to action a graphic. That goes for phone numbers, URLs, and verbiage such as “call now” or “click here”.

· Include a call to action in the preview pane. The preview pane or window is the two- to four-inch-high space that many recipients see in their email inbox before they opt to open or discard the message. “Enewsletters should include headlines or ‘in this issue’ content teasers. Promotional emails should summarise or highlight the key value proposition and call to action. And definitely do not put any administrative items like unsubscribe or ‘add us to your email address book’ in this space at the top of your email.”

· Make the most of preheaders. Also known as snippet text, this is a brief bit of verbiage that appears in the inbox of some email clients along with the subject line. For instance, Gmail users viewing their inbox on a PC see the first few words of the email message immediately following the subject line. Outlook’s AutoPreview mode reveals a brief amount of text directly below the subject line. The text picked up by the email client is usually from the first line of the email message, so bear that in mind when crafting your messages.

· Test your emails in a variety of email clients to see how each renders the messages. By now it should be apparent that how your email appears to a recipient using Outlook isn’t necessarily how it will appear to a recipient using Yahoo! or reading the message via a mobile device. “A quick scan of your list or database report should tell you which email clients are popular with your audience,” Lyris notes. “At the very least, send tests to Outlook 2007, Gmail, and a mobile device, since these are the email clients most notorious for mangling formatting.”

¹Published: 12th May 2009
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Don’t sell PURLs!

Tweet This discussion is directed to anyone who thinks they are in a position to “wow” their prospect with an offer to increase results with increased response rates generated by the introduction of personalized URLs (PURLs) in their next campaign. Though the technology is nothing new, we are seeing a greater interest in this service as more publicity of its merits is exposed. For purely selfish reasons the time has come for me to offer these folks my advice…“Don’t sell PURLs”!

You see, at AccuLink we specialize in highly personalized communications and I find myself spending a lot of my time educating others about the benefit of PURLs and how they fit inside a well thought out campaign. Many of my customers are value added resellers who want desperately to be the first to introduce their customers to this new technology. Crazy as it may sound, I find myself discouraging them from selling PURLs more often than not. Let me explain with a simple analogy.

We all know that baseball, like any competitive sport, involves much more than luck to win consistently throughout a season. Championship teams begin with strong coaching, hard work, talented players, thoughtful execution, good timing and practice, practice, practice to name a few. Now in the game of business I equate a PURL with a catcher’s mitt. The ball is the data and all the other aspects of the game are no different than the considerations one must consider in a marketing campaign. Examples of those ingredients include data research, strategic objectives, target audience, relevant messages, powerful incentives, strong call to action, appealing design, timing, ample budget, testing, and follow up (the list can go on).
My intention here is to point out that a salesman is misguided if he focuses on selling a team owner on the idea that a catcher’s mitt product will bring that team a championship trophy. I would argue he may sell his product once but he is risking that relationship if he does not address the other ingredients to the team’s potential victory. A successful marketing campaign is no different.

The moral of the story is to understand where a PURL resides in a campaign. Focus on ALL the ingredients and when you get to the point in a discussion where your client agrees that there is a need to capture more information within the campaign than you started with…well THAT is when the PURL discussion begins and it will sell itself!