Take Relevancy Beyond Direct Mail

Direct mail in all its forms is a very important part of the marketing mix. As we have begun to explore direct mail, we have seen that relevancy – speaking more directly to each recipient – greatly increases response rates to marketing communications. The great news is that you can apply the same principles of direct mail relevancy to the other channels in your marketing campaign.

Adding Relevancy to Email

There is no denying that email has become one of, if not the most important channel for marketing products and services. More and more people prefer to receive important communications via email and give less attention to direct mail. These same individuals can become overwhelmed with the volume of emails received daily thereby also diluting email readership. So on one hand email is a key channel to disseminate information, on other hand its very difficult to push past the channel clutter. The key to effective email marking is consistent with direct mail. Relevance greatly increase response rates and help will help you get through the clutter.
Think Big Solutions can help you go way beyond just name personalization. With our one-to-one solutions, we can make your email communications speak directly to your customers the same way your direct mail does. We can include variable image swapping, variable text, image personalization and dynamic content generation. Your email communications can now be completely customized on a recipient by recipient basis!

Bringing Them Back To You

By integrating a personal URL into all of the channels of your campaign, you can allow the readers to take action quickly, and that drives response rates up. Getting them to the landing sites is just half the battle though. Keeping them there and completing the action is the other half.
Once again, relevancy shines here. By fully personalizing each landing page to the recipient following the same guidelines as the outgoing communications, you keep their attention while they are at the site. They again feel like you understand them and that you can help them with what they want or need.

It’s All About Relevancy

A good marketing campaign must have the fundamentals covered: a good understanding of the target audience, a marketing message that will appeal to that audience, great graphic design to grab the reader and a strong offer to make them take action. Applying relevancy to that campaign will allow the message to appeal even more to the recipients, because it appears you understand them personally.
Using multiple touches in one campaign helps reinforce the message, gets more response because people respond differently to each medium (some prefer direct mail, some prefer email) and provides a reinforcement of your branding. Using multiple mediums like direct mail and email, as well as SMS messaging and other channels for a single campaign is called Cross Media Marketing. Think Big has been doing cross media marketing campaigns for the last 10 years and we would love to show you the power it has on your next campaign.

Who is Think Big Results?

Think Big Results is a division of Think BIG Solutions focused completely on bringing big results to marketing campaigns. Think Big has been providing leading-edge marketing technology solutions for over a decade. We work side by side with our clients to understand their business and campaign objectives and then sculpt a custom production solution to help drive results. With in-house production including Dynamic Content Email, Direct Mail, Web & SMS Text, we mix technology and traditional marketing production to produce results based solutions suited to your particular situation. When you work with Think Big Results, you are working with a business partner interested in your success.

Matthew Davies is a 20 year veteran of the printing and graphics arts industry. He has spent over 10 years specializing in digital printing and personalized digital communications. In addition to a freelance writer, he now works as a portrait photographer in Boulder, CO. You may contact him at matt@daviescreative.com.

A good blog post about PURLS:

In a recent blog post from TargetMarketing.com, Ethan Boldt discusses some interesting points about PURLs as a follow-up to a webinar he had. His discussion on the location of the PURL was interesting. However, in several places, Mr. Boldt makes the important point – PURLs are not magical. Simply slapping one on a marketing piece does not instantly increase responses. The bottom line is that all of the traditional marketing concepts remain at play: You need to understand the audience that you are speaking to, you need to speak to them in a relevant way with a message about their needs, and you have to give them an incentive to want to take action with you.

The full article can be found at: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/purls-5-things-you-need-know-about-personalized-urls