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Blog posts in Direct marketing
Five lessons to help you stay focused
November 17, 2011
By Luan Wise
As I embark on my biggest personal career move to date I’ve spent some time reflecting on what important lessons I’ve learnt and what will help maintain my focus as a freelance marketing consultant.
1. Marketing really does generate response
Being an environmental champion for an industry tagged with the term “junk mail” should be tough, yet, in my experience the response to developing sustainable initiatives has all been positive. Most notably a direct mail campaign – sending oak tree seedlings as an invitation to a series of seminars – resulted in not only over 100 event attendees but numerous enquiries for planting/care instructions. Weeks later I even received several photos of names trees, happy and growing well in their new pots!
2. Teamwork delivers success
The growth of the relatively small company I joined in 2007 has undoubtedly been down to the hard work of knowledgeable professionals working together to deliver a unique service in a newly liberalised marketplace. Its position at number 30 in the 2010 Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 league of the fastest growing UK private companies is testament to that success. People buy people, and having great team players is a sure ingredient for success.
3. You get out what you put in
We all know that a work life balance is important. My fondest work hard/play hard memory was a project to be launched at a national event for over 200 people. The launch was followed by an awards evening — just a few hours later all but one attendee could be found on Blackpool beach, attempting a workout aimed to freshen up mind and body. The conference was concluded by an amazing speech by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE. The hard work was hugely rewarding but also great fun.
4. Keep learning
I don’t just mean continuing with your own professional development (which I do personally via the CIM CPD scheme), but sharing knowledge with students at the University of Gloucestershire and City of Bristol College (via Social Enterprise organisation Working Knowledge) has provided more insight and inspiration than I thought possible.
5. Love what you do
Whether it’s signing off brochure proofs, spending time on an exhibition stand, seeking new followers on Twitter or presenting to students – whatever you do, enjoy it!
Luan Wise is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and is a freelance marketing consultant and marketing manager at Onepost.
Why go it alone? Integrated marketing works best
October 21, 2011
“I’ll tell you one thing, it’s always better when we’re together.”
The words of Jack Johnson also ring true for media channels. But don’t just take my word for it — a raft of recent research has shown the benefit of linking direct mail with other media.
The latest, from GI Insight, revealed that nearly half (47 per cent) of UK consumers said that they are prompted to check out a website by something they have received in the post.
And a recent IPA study identified that three is the most effective number of advertising media required to drive hard business measures, such as sales gain, customer acquisition and retention and reduction of price sensitivity.
Maximising the strengths of each medium is key, for example, when direct mail is used together with more traditional advertising channels, it combines targeted, personal messages with broad mass-reaching communications.
The guaranteed reach of mail will maintain its value in the mix as other media channels are increasingly filtered by consumers. This makes the preservation of the Universal Service fulfilled by Royal Mail so important.
By comparison, press ads fight for attention in a busy environment. But, with direct mail in the mix, stand-out is improved. According to the Royal Mail Media Centre, 65 per cent of consumers agree with the statement, “I am more likely to remember something if I see it advertised in a newspaper and it’s also communicated by post”. The same research highlights that 63 per cent of consumers agreed that “mail is good at supporting or clarifying the ads I see in newspapers”.
Similarly, direct mail supports TV advertising by providing more detailed information — 49 per cent of consumers agreed that brochures in the post can help the brands that advertise on TV seem a bit more real.
Last year, DMA/ITV research revealed that the simple act of combining TV advertising with a direct mail campaign can generate an increased consumer response rate of 96 per cent above that of a stand-alone direct mail campaign.
Armed with facts like this, would you really still consider running a standalone campaign?
Luan Wise is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and marketing manager at Onepost.
Need more help with your marketing strategy? Read our guide — How to prepare a marketing plan.
Three (easily made) mistakes of telemarketing
October 06, 2011
1. Not picking up the phone!
Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but this is the number one problem for small business owners. Even seasoned telemarketers will have days when they just don’t feel like doing it, and they are used to doing it day in, day out. Add this feeling to having a list as long as your arm of tasks that need doing urgently, or that are important to keeping business running smoothly and you can see why many businesses just aren’t making any sales calls at all. If this is your situation, try and set aside an amount of time each day to make a set number of calls – ideally the same time and same number of calls every day. Even if it is only five calls and ten minutes at 10am – make it a discipline and when you start to see results it may encourage you to do more — at the very least you will see some results.
2. Who are you going to call?
The next problem is having not identified who you want to call. If you are sitting there ready to go at 10am but without a clue who you want to speak to, you’re going to give up pretty quickly, or resort to hastily-made decisions that may see you making calls to companies who are unlikely to use your services. Sit down and think about the types of businesses who will use your service – the best way to move from here is to use LinkedIn – search for people who work for those companies and try to connect with them, asking if you can call them. If you don’t use LinkedIn or you want to call a larger list of businesses, there are many sources of business data that are reliable and can target industry sectors, size of company/turnover, length of time trading and so on. If you have your targets ready and planned it will make the process a lot easier.
3. I have no idea what I want to achieve on the phone call
Put the phone down! Don’t start making the calls until you have decided what you want. If you don’t know then you can’t communicate a desired outcome and the call, even if it starts well, could be wasted. When you pick up the phone you need two things at a minimum – some kind of hook that will get your prospect interested and listening, such as a special offer, or a key benefit of what you offer, and you need a compelling reason why they should … why they should what? If you don’t know what this last bit is you won’t achieve it! You need a compelling reason why they should buy your product, agree to an appointment, give you an email address and read an email you will send, subscribe to your newsletter, look at your comparisons and so on.
Whatever the outcome is, if you are clear then the prospect will be, and if you’ve got your hook and compelling reason, then you’re in with a shout!
Julia Smith is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and founder of Cre8 Sales Solutions.
Move over Mary Portas…
July 11, 2011
Mary Portas does shops — we do data lists. When it comes to data, we think it’s about time that someone started to put service and return first for their clients. To that end I am donning a ginger wig and am blogging about how you can get the service you deserve when acquiring data lists. These are just six of the common sales tricks that some of the less scrupulous data companies out there employ.
1. End of month sale. Oh really?
All data sales people have monthly targets to meet and when the going gets tough, they will slash their prices without a second thought. So how does that make you feel when you have purchased their data two weeks before and been told, “No we never offer discounts — our data is too good”. It completely devalues their product.
How to avoid: Speak to a list or data broker who knows the system and only pays the market rate for data.
2. Quote valid for only seven days
Absolute hogwash. I guarantee that if you call back in two weeks and want to go ahead, they will let you. This approach doesn’t have your campaign’s ROI at heart, only the commission to fuel their Friday night session. What’s really interesting here is that Direct Marketing Association members MUST NOT employ this tactic otherwise they will be investigated.
How to avoid: Just ignore it. Plan and execute your campaigns to your own timescale.
3. “If you sign today...”
This is a pressure sale, pure and simple. If someone says this to you, ask yourselves, “Do they really want my campaign to succeed? Do they really care about my objectives?”
How to avoid: Thank the salesperson for showing you their true colours and walk away.
4. The volume discount
There is nothing inherently wrong with this principle and economies of scale are always useful. However, a data company should be encouraging you to test and work out your ROI before committing to buying large volumes. By offering a volume discount for a large purchase, they are just trying to hit their sales target. Let them hit their sales targets after they have proven that their data can help you.
How to avoid: Speak to a good independent broker, they will package together small data sets for you to test.
5. One million records for £395!
Would you buy a Rolex watch from a man in a pub for £50? Buying a massive list like this is a sure-fire way to get very poor quality data, be blacklisted by your ISP, get a TPS fine and damage your brand.
How to avoid: Common sense this one, if it’s too good to be true, it is. Buy from DMA members only and seek the council of a data broker.
6. What’s your budget?
This is a tricky one. Discussing budgets with a list broker is a worthwhile exercise and can enhance the data planning output. However, there are certain companies out there that will use this information for their own gain. How often have you told them your budget — say £1000 — then received back a quote for £995? There are many people who will supply data at your budget level to get the most revenue for their own sales rather than try to save you money.
How to avoid: Be wary of disclosing budget information unless you are using a trusty list broker.
Move over Queen of Shops, Mary Portas – John, King of data is here to clean up lists and data! That aside, I am just pleased to have hair again after all these years...
John Keating is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and director at Databroker.
Read more about buying data in our guide to marketing with your database
Cutting through the data jargon (part two)
May 19, 2011
Onwards with the mission to give you the heads-up and the low-down on baffling data jargon. In part two, I am focusing on spring cleaning and ensuring your data is spic and span and up-to-date. It is that time of year after all.
Tele-verification
I will start off with an easy one. A data record that has been tele-verified has been called up and the details double-checked by a call centre agent. So you know that the telephone number, address details and contact name have had their t’s crossed and i’s dotted.
Data recency
As the name suggests, data recency refers to how recently a record has been checked. So a data file that has 24-month recency was gathered or tele-verified two years ago. A file with 12-month recency was gathered or verified 12 months ago and so on. The shorter the recency, the more likely the contact details are to be accurate. Recency is especially important in business data, due to the regularity of staff changes – think about it; you are more likely to change your job than your house.
De-dupe
“What is a de-dupe?” It’s a very common question. A de-dupe deletes duplicate records. So if you have multiple records for one customer, a de-dupe will remove the duplicates. This makes sure that you are not mailing, emailing or telephoning the same company twice, which can be embarrassing and costly.
The other useful reason for a de-dupe is to make sure you are not buying data you already have. So when you are buying new data records, you should de-dupe against your existing customer and prospect data. That way you are only buying net data, i.e. data you don’t already have in your marketing database. Again saving you time and money.
Data audits
A bit like a financial audit, a data audit will tell you what state of repair your marketing database is in. The audit identifies any dodgy records such as wrong contact names or wrong address details. It will flag any records that are on the suppression files such as TPS or MPS. It will highlight companies that have moved or that no longer exist. The audit report will also tell you what you need to do to get your data back into tiptop condition. And more importantly how much it will cost.
Data cleansing or cleaning
Once you have identified the problems with your data with an audit, a data cleanse will put it right. Think of a data cleanse as a spring clean. All the incorrect details will be updated and the dodgy records removed. Therefore you won’t be wasting time and effort trying to market to them. Happy days.
John Keating is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and director at Databroker.
Read Cutting through the data jargon (part one).
Find out more about marketing using a mailing list in our FAQs.
Cutting through the data jargon
May 06, 2011
The world of business-to-business data is full of confusing acronyms and jargon.
For the uninitiated, data purchasing can be a minefield and if you buy the wrong list you can end up with a failed campaign and wasted marketing budget. The jargon doesn’t help. Here’s our pocket translation guide to help make sure that your direct marketing campaigns succeed and deliver increased sales.
DMA: Direct Marketing Association
This is the governing body for direct marketing. The DMA ensures that all members comply to best practice guidelines and the rules and regulations of gathering, storing and selling data. You should only ever purchase from data companies who are registered DMA members. Offers that are too good to be true usually are just that. A million records for £50 on eBay is the data equivalent of ”a bloke down the pub” and could end up costing you a hundred times that in fines for data misuse – leave well alone and stick to the straight and narrow with the DMA.
TPS, CTPS, MPS
These are the Suppression services;
TPS — Telephone Preference Service
MPS — Mailing Preference Service
CTPS — Corporate Preference Service
Anyone who has registered with any of the above suppression services is off-limits as far as direct marketing is concerned. Aside from the fact it is against the law and will cost you thousands in fines (TPS), why bother wasting time and money trying to hook up with someone who is just not interested? It is damaging to your brand and your budget. Keep your self-respect, keep your money in your pocket and make sure all data you buy is screened against the relevant suppression files. This is standard for DMA members, so you shouldn’t need to worry – unless you speak to that bloke in the pub of course...
Data licences and leases
Data is usually sold on a lease. This means that the data owner leases you the data rather than sells you the data outright. Outright purchases are usually very expensive as data owners, understandably, want to protect the investment they have put into gathering, storing and maintaining the data. If they lease you the data then they retain ownership and you have to comply with the rules of the lease. There are two types of data licence; single-use and multiple-use for 12 months. These are fairly self-explanatory. With single-use you can only communicate with that business or contact, once. With multi-use, you can communicate with them as many times as you want within the 12-month period, depending on the precise terms of the license.
Beware the data seeds
“How will anyone know I am using data when I shouldn’t be?”
The answer is data seeds. Every data file purchased has between one and three dummy records. These dummy records are called data seeds and they are there to monitor activity to that record. If you send an email, it’s recorded. If you send 20 emails, they are also recorded. If you use the data without a licence, the seed reports will highlight this mis-use and you will be charged. But if you comply with the rules you will be fine.
SIC codes
Now we are getting to the nitty-gritty of actually selecting your data. SIC Codes are Standard Industry Codes. Every business is given an SIC code according to what they do. You want to sell knives? Then the SIC for butchers is a good place to start. A good data salesperson should also advise you on other industries you could target that you might not have considered. For example; restaurants, catering colleges, specialist kitchenware shops and department stores.
Data count
Once you have decided on what industries or SIC codes to target and applied any other criteria such as business size or location; your data advisor will go away and get a data count for you. This is the total number of records that match your criteria, your “data pot” so to speak. From this pot you can decide on how many records you need for your campaign. In some cases the number of records will be less than you expected, in which case you can expand your criteria by targeting additional industries, for example, or by extending the geographical boundaries. Again, a good data broker will be able to advise on the best way to increase the data pot numbers while maintaining the campaign focus.
John Keating is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and director at Databroker.
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