Do you have the ability to develop and
track marketing campaigns that use multiple
channels? Can you suppress the people who have
already acted on your offer from future promotions
in the campaign? Can you measure the ROI on the
entire multi-channel campaign as well as portions
of the campaign? Can you use your respondent data
to help you determine how to wisely use your
marketing dollars by channel?
A common trend among direct marketers is
creating multi-channel campaigns. Since many
direct marketers are still learning about
integrated marketing campaigns, determining the
combination of channels to use and the number of
offers to send to each individual can be a
challenge. You can use your marketing database to
execute your multi-channel campaigns and create
analyses to learn which channels or combinations
of channels will increase response rates.
Your marketing database provides the
perfect platform from which to launch a
multichannel campaign. An example of a
multi-channel promotion would be a campaign that
targets individuals over the age of 65. For this
example, you might develop a direct mailing for
the initial launch of your campaign and use a list
that you pull from your marketing database. You
may also want to create a segment(s) in your list
to serve as your control group(s) to measure
performance. A control group is a group of
individuals that will not receive
your campaign. Creating a control group allows you
to compare the differences in response rates
between customers who receive your marketing
campaign and those who do not. The second part of
your campaign may be a follow-up phone call. You
would create another list using the same
individuals you selected for the initial direct
mail list suppressing individuals who have already
responded to your offer.
Your marketing database also gives you the
power to track the performance of your
multi-channel promotions by creating a variety of
analyses and ROI reports. Analyses can help answer
a variety of direct marketing questions. The
following lists just a few common questions that
can generally be answered through analyses.
-
How many times
does a respondent need to be touched with the
same
offer before they
act?
-
At what point is
it no longer worthwhile to continue sending the
same offer
to a prospect and/or
customer?
-
Which channels or combinations of
channels are more effective for your
products or services?
-
Is it more
effective to follow-up a direct mail piece with
a phone call, email,
a text message or
another direct mail
piece?
What is the
optimal combination of channels and direct
marketing
sequences to generate a
response?
This is an evolving and ever improving
process. Be disciplined, stay with it and the
results will happen.
The bottom line is to ensure your marketing
database contains everything you need to
accurately execute, track and optimize
multi-channel marketing campaigns. In addition,
using your marketing database to its full
capability allows you to measure your response
rates and ROI by channel.
In this newsletter, we discussed executing
multi-channel direct marketing campaigns. In our
next newsletter, we will discuss using your
marketing database to precisely manage the data
for each direct marketing channel, including data
accuracy, validation, and management of
opt-ins/opt-outs.
Visit us at ITEC Houston. Contact us for free registration
details.
