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Never Mind the (Marketing) Buzzwords!

Never Mind the (Marketing) Buzzwords!

Author: Andy Pond

November 2019

#Marketing #Personalisation #DirectMail

There are plenty of ‘buzzwords’ around in business, and marketing departments seem particularly keen to have more than their fair share. The current list includes ‘disruptive marketing’, ‘growth-hacking’ and ‘snackable marketing’. These are relevant in varying degrees to businesses.


But here are a couple that all marketing departments, whether your business is big or small, should be aware of and actively using: ‘Multi-channel Marketing’ and ‘Personalisation’.


Multi-channel marketing

Sometimes called 'Crossmedia marketing', multi-channel marketing offers a seamless, consistent and integrated customer experience regardless of whether a customer comes into a bricks-and-mortar store, shops via a website, receives direct mail, or browses social media. Multi-channel marketing strategies build on the understanding that a customer may begin their journey on one platform, only to jump to another, and finally convert to a sale by way of a third.


It is generally agreed that sending a single communication to a prospect is unlikely to generate a meaningful response or sale. The Online Marketing Institute advises that it could take anything between 7 and 13 marketing ‘touchpoints’ before your customer is likely to purchase. With multi-channel Marketing campaigns, touchpoints could be in the form of email, print, SMS or social media but all will be consistent in branding, tone of voice and content.


Personalisation

Adding personalisation to your campaign has an even greater chance of succeeding. Recent Hubspot analysis found a personalised call-to-action generated 4 times the responses than non-personalised. Even more impressive, a One Spot report discovered personalised communications generate 17% higher revenue than non-personalised marketing.


When it comes to personalisation, most people think of name and address appearing in the window of an envelope or those jaunty emails that we all get starting “Hey there, Cannot read primary data, no valid user (CONFirstname)”. In this simple form it is personalisation but lacks real impact or relevance to the recipient beyond their name. Tailoring the content and design of the communication to the person you are sending to will mean the recipient is more likely to interact and potentially purchase from you.


One of our customers, a top business university, recently ventured into direct mail to interact with their Alumni. They produced simple letters with the text, content and ‘ask amount’ relevant to the recipient. The relatively small campaign generated 50% of their total annual donations because their data was accurate and the content was relevant to the recipient.


Take your marketing to the next level

Taking personalised, multi-channel marketing to the next level means automating the process. Automation adds a trigger to each touchpoint to generate the next action and communication, for example:


1. You send an email to your customer who visits their personalised webpage (PURL) but goes no further

2. A follow up email is sent to this customer based on their responses on PURL

3. Still no response, so they receive a direct mail piece which is personalised and also based on the responses

4. The customer trusts direct mail and are then driven to the website to make a purchase

5. You then have data to show not only what they are buying but also their preferred channel of communication - you are ready for the next campaign!


Accurate data and an understanding of your customers is essential to achieving high impact, personalised communications. Of course, personalised marketing campaigns can support a cleanse of your data and keep you the right side of GDPR – that’s another story!


So, is your next marketing adventure going to be an automated, multi-channel campaign with personalisation at its core?


Now there’s some buzzwords to play with!


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