Print Is Dead, Long Live Print
C
anadian forests might want to hold off on ordering the noisemakers. Despite the steady migration of marketing dollars (and eyeballs) to online marketing channels, direct mail (hard copy, ink-on-paper) isn’t going anywhere. Direct mail is different from, say, the newspaper industry, which is facing an existential threat. In the case of newspapers, people have a choice to get their news online rather than ink-on-paper. By contrast, direct mail allows the marketer to actually push their messages to specific targets, and it’s unlikely that consumers are going to stop responding to push-based marketing anytime soon.
Still, the models for direct mail advertising and direct mail marketing are undergoing significant reconstruction. For example, there are dramatic increases in personalization and the ability to produce one-to-one images and copy at lower costs. There are new printing technologies that are enabling full-color imaging, as well as rich-data imaging, that is of a super high-quality; both becoming more and more cost effective to large-scale marketers.
Marketers are also deploying more sophisticated analytics, with targeting methodologies and optimization models to improve profitability and drive down customer-acquisition costs. One of the most unique ways that marketers are using the Web to enhance direct mail advertising campaigns is by looking at the popular vote. To wit, they’re taking search results from Google—organic and paid—and using the keywords to inform the creative for the direct mail component of the campaign.
Also, marketers are creating more personalized offers to someone who has responded to a Web campaign. Companies need to appreciate that there’s an interrelationship between the outbound communications of a direct mail campaign and the response capture on the Web, which is especially true for B-to-B marketers.
Marketers are increasingly using technologies, such as Dukky (http://www.dukky.com/), to have a sharing of offers presented in a direct mail program. The consumer can go to the Web and activate the offer, but the initial communication has to be generated via direct mail.
Sure, online continues to grab more marketing dollars, and we’re probably approaching at a five-day postage week. But when a marketer needs to generate tens of thousands of new customers a month (or a week), there is no surer channel than the use of ink-on-paper direct mail.
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Tags: Direct Mail Campaign, direct mail service, Online Marketing Services
Categories: Direct Mail Marketing
