David Baldaro – Direct Mail

Are marketers running in the wrong direction with their budget?

A couple of things caught my eye over the past week; one was a report from Forrester and another was a survey that came from InfoPrint Solutions. Both combined made me ask the question, “Are marketers all running in the wrong direction?”.

The report from Forresters (Click here for report) shows the dramatic shift away from traditional marketing spend onto new interactive media; things like search, display, email, social and mobile marketing. In summary an increase from $20 billion to over $55 billion over the next few years. And where is this new spend coming from? Certainly not from an increase marketing budget – but instead by reducing the spend in other areas.

When surveyed 60% of marketers said that they would be reducing their budget away from traditional marketing. 40% would be cutting direct mail spend, 35% would be cutting newspapers spend and 28% would be cutting magazine spend.

This is a huge swing away from traditional printed media – and in some ways my doorstep will feel better for it.

However, would I be happy to have the amount of direct mail reduced only to see a dramatic increase in junk that is coming through to me via email, mobile and online medias? I do not think so.

It seems like marketers and organisations alike are desperately moving away from traditional medias because they are expensive and not cost effective – whereas online is cheaper and has potentially better results. However I come back to ‘me’, the customer – what would I prefer?

In contrast within the Infoprint survey (Click here for the report) 50% of respondents stated that they would prefer to receive marketing information about new products or services via traditional mail rather than email. Three out […]

By David Baldaro|September 21st, 2009|Personalised Communications|3 Comments

Sky Bet and Sky Sports – the Dream Pairing for XMPie Personalisation

One of my customers (Alphagraphics North East) recently shared a site that they had prepared for Sky Bet and Sky Sports. The aim was to add value for new Skybet customers and to try and convert them to Skybet accounts (if they don’t already have one) and to get them to bet more on the Skybet sites, (this was done through email and direct mail directing people through to the http://www.skybet.com/dream).

My understanding is that 3 different printed direct mailers went out; new for new customers, one lapsed customers and one for current customers – all that carried personalised content and personalised images – and all driving customers to their personalised websites. All nicely timed for the start of the new season.

The cool bit for me is that on the site http://www.skybet.com/dream/ there’s a great tool for delivering online personalised UK football fixtures. The generic landing page, collects details about you and your club, along with a shirt number and then presents you back your own personalised RURL which not only contains the club fixtures of your chosen club but also a personalised image of your shirt. This is done quickly and with great effect.

What is also very nice is that they haven’t stopped there – Alphagraphics and Sky have also implemented a viral element to the campaign which is integrated into the primary campaign. If you click on refer-a-friend you are asked for a friends details and their email address. Again a personalised email is created, incorporating a personalised image and sent to the recipient.

It would’ve been outstanding if the refer-a-friend element of the campaign was directly linked to the original landing page – so that it knew that I was referring a friend; and therefore not asking me to re-enter my own […]

By David Baldaro|September 7th, 2009|Personalised Communications, XMPie|1 Comment

Understanding Direct Mail Impact and ROI Whitepaper

I recently was pointed towards some very useful whitepaper hosted by one of our customer in Auston, Texas. QuantumDigital.

One whitepaper that caught my attention was one entitled, “Understanding Direct Mail Impact and ROI” and contains some interesting facts and figures as well as some common sense approach to implementing successful direct mail and integrated campaigns.
Marketers can expect a return of $43.52, $22.75 and $19.97 respectively, for every dollar spent on email marketing, direct mail and internet marketing.
It’s certainly worth a read and acts as a good reference to those still debating whether or not to take the drive into using direct mail in more effective ways; as well as providing compelling evidence to service providers about the potential from embracing this technology as soon as possible.

Other whitepapers available at the same location

Best Practices for Effective Email Design
The Bond Between Email & Direct Mail for Lead Generation
The Power of Web-to-print Portals