Blog Activity

  • Email May Not Be Sexy – But It’s HOT!

    Issue: 

    June, 2012

    Despite the ongoing challenges to email, it still rules as a major customer service and marketing channel. Here are some insights from an industry veteran about how to take your email campaigns to the next level.

    All the buzz today is about social and mobile, but the true workhorses for direct marketers are direct mail and email. Both channels are not particularly sexy, but they certainly do work!

    I’m going to focus on email. Let’s start with research from the Direct Marketing Association in late 2011:

    • Email is the single marketing channel that produces the highest ROI.
    • For every dollar invested in this highly profitable channel, the return on investment in 2012 is 39.40. (The second highest channel is search, pegged at $22.38.)

    One major reason for email’s top position is that it is inexpensive – particularly if you use it to communicate with opt-in customers and prospects. While it is relatively easy to “batch and blast” email, savvy marketers take advantage of personalizing technology to make their efforts pay off.

    Here are three concepts that will help you take your email program to the next level:

    Relevance

    Relevance is all about making your customer feel special. Use the data you collected when they signed up, and personalize your emails. Better yet, if you can link email subscribers to your customer database, you know if they interact with you in multiple channels how much they’ve spent with you and what they buy. You can mine this data to focus on offers, products and promotions that will capture their attention.

    Take it a step further and look at their behavior in terms of what truly interests them. If you have good tracking in place, you should be able to connect email activity (a click-through on a particular link) to site activity (did they view multiple pages, how much time did they spend online, what product categories did they focus on?)

    Then, you can use this data to present products and offers that are truly of interest.

    Dynamic Personalization

    Dynamic personalization in email can boost relevance. The basic concept behind it is to set up if/then rules to deliver appropriate messaging. To keep this process simple, think of your email template(s). Reserve a block within the template to present relevant content. Let’s pretend it’s the dead of winter and you sell shoes. With dynamic personalization, the first item featured to those in the north are Uggs boots – and to those in the south, Birkenstock sandals. The rest of the message might be the same for all, but the primary offer will resonate more based on geography. It’s more relevant. And the latest email technology makes this easy to do.

    Triggered Messaging

    Triggered messaging can be pure gold for marketers. These messages are also based on rules that look at user actions (or inaction) from email and your website (for example, a welcome message sent within minutes of someone signing up for your email program).

    My two favorite triggered messages are:

    • Cross-selling in email order confirmations
    • Sending an email to someone who has started the check-out process at your website but did not complete the order

    You are leaving money on the table if you don’t try these two techniques!

    Today, between 50% and 75% of all Web shopping carts are abandoned. Do nothing, and you’ve lost the sale. Send one or more reminders that the customer has left something in their cart and you can re-capture between 5% and 15% of otherwise lost sales. My advice is to send more than one email and don’t start with a discount.

    And, if possible, you should picture the abandoned item in the email.

    It Works. Period.

    Let me close with one marketer’s experience that I recently observed: Only 4.1% of their total email volume was triggered and transactional in nature. Yet a whopping 41.2% of their email trackable sales were generated from those messages! I hope that’s an eye-opener for you.

    To thrive in today’s marketplace, be relevant, and use dynamic personalization and triggered email messages. You’ll be glad you did!

    Reggie Brady is president of Reggie BradyMarketing Solutions, a direct and email marketing consultancy. Reach her at 203-838-8138 or reggie@reggiebrady.com

    Author: 

    Reggie Brady
    Reggie Brady's picture

    Reggie Brady is president of Reggie BradyMarketing Solutions, a direct and email marketing consultancy. Reach her at 203-838-8138 or reggie@reggiebrady.com

    Postings is a quarterly newsletter from The Direct Marketing Club of New York.

  • Chet Dalzell's picture

    Direct Marketing Club of New York Announces 2012 Silver Apple Award Honorees – plus a Golden Apple

    Submitted by Chet Dalzell on
    Direct and Interactive Marketing Leaders Share Honors at Annual Gala 
On Thursday Evening, November 8, 2012, at New York’s Edison Ballroom, Times Square

    NEW YORK, August 22, 2012 – The Direct Marketing Club of New York (www.dmcny.org) announced today the recipients of its 2012 Silver Apple Awards, now in its 28th year. The Silver Apples recognize individuals and organizations for their outstanding contributions to direct and interactive marketing, during a career spanning at least 25 years. In addition, for the fourth time in its history, the organization also announced it will bestow a Golden Apple to honor an individual for 50 years of service. A gala to mark the awards will be held Thursday evening, November 8, at New York’s Edison Ballroom.

    The 2012 honorees include:

    • Scott Fenwick,
      Vice President – Sales Training & Development, ValueClick Media (New York, NY)
    • Jim Fosina,
      Founder & CEO, Fosina Marketing Group (Danbury, CT)
    • Donald “Don” P. Hinman,
      Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Data Strategy, Epsilon Targeting (Lafayette, CO)
    • Prof. Harvey Markovitz,
      Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing, Pace University (New York, NY)
    • Pegg Nadler,
      President, Pegg Nadler Associates, Inc. (New York, NY)
    • Don Peppers and Martha Rogers,
      Ph.D., Founding Partners, Peppers & Rogers Group (Stamford, CT)

    The corporate Silver Apple Award honoree for 2012 is McVicker & Higginbotham (Long Island City, NY), a provider of direct marketing services to schools, hospitals, museums, performing art centers and various other non-profit entities.

    In addition, the Direct Marketing Club of New York will bestow a special Golden Apple to Leon Henry, president, Leon Henry, Inc. (Hartsdale, NY), for his more than 50 years of leadership in the direct marketing field. The Golden Apple is rarely bestowed, and this is only the fourth time in 28 years that a Golden Apple recipient has been announced.

    "These honorees represent innovators, thought leaders, educators and experts who truly represent how direct and interactive marketing serve brands, consumers and businesses alike," said DMCNY Club President Cyndi Lee, senior vice president, list management sales & strategic development, Specialists Marketing Services. "As marketing evolves to true integration, where branding and marketing measurement converge, and the customer is at the center of brand engagement and interaction, these individuals, and our corporate recipient, serve as teachers in our field."

    The 2012 Silver Apple recipients were chosen by the Club’s past presidents. The recipients must have at least 25 years’ experience in the business, a commitment to volunteerism and leadership, and a record of vital contributions to the growth of the industry. The Golden Apple honoree is selected in the same manner.

    This year’s event marks the 28th anniversary of the award, and a special gala will be held in Manhattan’s Edison Ballroom, at 228 West 47th Street near Times Square in New York on Thursday, November 8, 2012, from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m.

    Each year, the Silver Apple Award event also serves as a key fundraising event to support New York-area programs and scholarships for college-level educational curricula and content in direct and interactive marketing. Ticket sales are underway and space will be limited to 30 tables. For pricing and availability contact Stuart Boysen, executive director, DMCNY, at stuboysen@earthlink.net, (516)746-6700; or Matthew Frattura at matthew.frattura@infogroup.com and (402)836-5527.

    A full listing of winners’ biographies is available here: http://www.dmcny.org/2012silverapple-bios

  • Moving Forward Together

    Issue: 

    March, 2011

    If you’re like most managers, for the past year, two years, even four years, you’ve been running yourself and your staff ragged trying to do more with less. Now that things are beginning to ease up a bit, you may be starting to consider hiring again, or investing in new equipment or new outside services. You might also be feeling a mix of caution and relief and thinking hopefully about growth as you move on from the grinding pressure of the recent and not-so-recent past.

    But even though the days of extreme belt-tightening may be behind you, don’t loosen up so much that your pants fall off. Here are a few realities to bear in mind as we look to the future.

    Your Staff Knows the Score

    Your staff pays at least some attention to the news. They know employment is edging up and more companies are complaining about not being able to find skilled or experienced workers. They also know that corporate profits are generally growing. So don’t be surprised if some of your best staff people decide it’s time to look for greener pastures.

    Even the ones who prefer to stay with you – or who have fewer options – may start expressing pent-up demand for the pay increases you held back a year,18 months, or as long as 36 months ago – or for raises that are above the 2 percent that has become the norm. If your staff thinks that your company’s owners and shareholders are finally making money but not sharing the profits, or if they suspect that management is being rewarded and they’re not, the negativity can become overwhelming.

    And don’t forget about the underemployed part-timers who don’t have health insurance, or the full-timers who are paying a greater percentage of their health care expenses than they did before the recession: These are also needs that might come out into the open as business picks up.

    Something’s Gotta Give

    During this intense period of stress, many managers have been leaping from one initiative to another, trying one gambit after another. But all too often, staffs that are too thin have been whipsawed from one flavor-of-the-month to the next one, and they’re showing signs of wear. You might be noticing more errors, more illness, more intensity (of the negative kind), more backbiting, less tolerance of others’ mistakes, more distraction – you name it.

    So it could be time to think about hiring again, but it certainly isn’t a time when you can afford a hiring or placement mistake. Good fit – organizational, cultural, and role – is crucial. You’ll probably need to dust off or retool your old selection criteria and interview processes, and buff up your onboarding and training programs.

    Be sure the candidates you consider have faced challenges similar to the ones your business confronts; it’s not enough if they’ve held jobs with similar titles. Behavioral interviewing techniques are very effective at bringing out information about their ability to work well with a team, their experience with handling your kind of pressures, and their potential for ongoing contribution and growth.

    Try to involve potential colleagues in the interviewing process as well. A peer may pick up on grandstanding or a lack of open-mindedness that may not come out in discussion with a potential superior. It’s also to your benefit for job seekers to know exactly what they’re getting into, and peer interviewers will often explain the current reality of the job more concretely than anyone else can.

    The Bottom Line to Moving Forward: Honesty

    You’ve survived some very tough years with some of the very same people who are still working in your shop. How do you keep them at their best now that more options may be opening up for them? How do you encourage them to reach even greater heights now that you have a few more resources to spread around?

    The first step is to find out what they think. Don’t assume that you know. They’ve been as careful about maintaining their jobs during this tough period as you’ve been about maintaining your job – and the business.

    If you haven’t been checking in regularly, it’s time to have some real heart-to-heart talks with your staff, with both sides exchanging information about expectations – and hopes – for the future.

    Once you know you’re on each other’s wavelength, you can renew your plans for building that future together. Make sure you fill your folks in about what’s going on: how much progress you’re making, or

    where you want to be but haven’t gotten to yet. And think twice and three times about what kind of recovery they (and you) need – or additional resources that will help ensure success – in preparation for leaping into significant new efforts.

    Liz Kislik helps businesses successfully address challenges and make the most of opportunities in customer service and sales, workforce performance and leadership development, and organizational structure and culture.  Liz also writes and publishes Workplace Wisdom,a weekly blog and monthly newsletter about management, service and self-care. Reach her at liz@lizkislik.com

    Author: 

    Liz Kislik
    Liz Kislik's picture

    As the economic picture begins to brighten, it’s time for managers to take stock: Are you prepared for the staffing and organizational challenges that an upturn can bring?

    Postings is a quarterly newsletter from The Direct Marketing Club of New York.

  • Driving Multichannel Marketing Through Online Preferences

    Issue: 

    March, 2012

    Customers’ channel preferences are changing left and right – and it’s more important than ever to know which channel your customer is paying attention to and using.

    Whether selling to consumers or to businesses, leveraging an online preference center is an effective best practice used by savvy marketers to deliver strategic communications and engage customers. Essentially, it is a place where the customer shakes hands with a brand.

    Maintaining Productive Online Preference Centers

    Here are six considerations to keep in mind when operating Online Preference Centers:

    1. Give Customers a True Choice in Their Communications. The first step in creating a preference center strategy is identifying the channels a marketer can support and finding out if those channels can be integrated at the database level. Channels may include all the traditional media, but it is important to consider social and mobile, too. Use the preference center to confirm preferred address and contact details for data accuracy.

      The next choice is one of frequency (ie, monthly, or maximum number of messages per week). In the past, the frequency of customer marketing communications often was determined by budget, occasionally determined by result optimization and often determined by the needs of multiple groups within an organization (a marketer only has one list of customers, and that list might be accessed by many people, resulting in too-frequent communications). Some channels, such as mobile, require frequency expectations – and a preference center can help enable the customer to provide their own frequency of communications.

      Finally, customers should be able to choose their content. Marketers may want to consider groupings of content (ie, sports or entertainment) as well as types of content, such as offers, events or new-product launches.

      Another aspect of the preference center is the “save” of the opt-out. When customers click on the opt-out link, the preference center can offer alternatives to the customer, such as less-frequent communications and the availability of different channels or different content. This allows a customer to opt down or to change content preferences.
    2. Enable Multichannel Marketing. Most marketers today communicate with customers across several different channels. Many understand that campaigns and corporate content should vary by channel, particularly in today’s environment where email, social and mobile communications are often managed by different teams. But, good marketers also know that campaigns must be carefully coordinated across different communication types. Remember that we all have our own version of what multichannel means to us. Putting the customer in charge of his or her own multichannel experience will mean better relevancy and results.
    3. Learn About and Understand Customers. Marketers can obtain a multitude of useful information about consumers through information provided in an online preference center. At the very minimum, asking for an email address, mobile phone numbers for text opt-in or a physical address for fulfillment is essential in improving data quality.

      Beyond those imperatives, there’s an opportunity to ask for information that will enhance the customer’s relationship and the flow of future communications. For example, consider offering dynamic surveys and polls to gain information about customers that can result in improved offers and communications. Leverage the fact that a brand recognizes its customer, and all of the behaviors associated with a preference profile can be tracked to best serve the customer.
    4. Engage With the Customer. The term “engagement” is often overused today, but it is one of the best reasons to consider an online preference center as the basis of many programs that produce dialogue and create value.

      Customers can create their profile to opt in or out of programs, but they might also register products, obtain warrantee information, store gift information for friends and family or participate in an online community at the center. Provide reasons for customers to come to the preference center – and to return repeatedly.
    5. Improve Loyalty and Retention. Creating a place where customers can directly communicate with a brand is a key aspect of customer retention and loyalty. Even if the marketer is not ready to implement a loyalty program, he or she can leverage a preference center to encourage customers’ continued interaction with the brand. Consider offering highly targeted coupons (customers’ IDs and data allow a marketer to be smart about coupons) or bringing in a local element by providing details about the nearest retail location. This private, customized brand gateway offers a great opportunity for customer retention and repeat purchases.

      Brands that offer loyalty programs can refine the preference center as customers access loyalty program benefits. Consider temporary card printing, viewing reward information or point balances, checking progress toward rewards or viewing previous purchases. These functions work within the preference center context to increase customer visits and interaction.
    6. Keep It Simple for the Customer.The preference center can provide corporate-level communications or give single brands the ability to communicate with customers within a corporate framework. A preference center provides value regardless of brand situation and increases value as customer preferences and data are applied more frequently. But, it is important to remember the customer experience across brands in order to ease any potential frustrations because of internal roadblocks. If a marketer has multiple brands, it should consider brand-specific preference centers that are integrated with other company brands.

    A Valuable Resource – in Both Directions

    Online preference centers provide customers the ability to tell marketers what they want – and allow marketers to save money by only providing communications in the chosen channels, and determine the

    best return on channel combinations. Ultimately, greater message relevance means better results.

    Jeannette Kocsis, senior vice president, digital marketing, oversees client digital strategy and media programs at The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks.  Jeannette is responsible for integration of new media, including social and mobile, into client offerings.  Reach her at jeannette_kocsis@harte-hanks.com.

    Author: 

    Jeanette Kocsis
    Jeanette Kocsis's picture

    Online preference centers offer benefits to marketers as well as consumers. Monitoring each customer’s preferences helps improve targeting, provides direction for multichannel campaigns and boosts engagement, among other rewards.

    Postings is a quarterly newsletter from The Direct Marketing Club of New York.

  • Creative Strategy: “At-a-Glance” Comprehension Drives Response

    Issue: 

    September, 2011

    The success of your direct marketing communications depends heavily on how well it is designed to help readers grasp your message quickly. But most people—even many designers themselves—don’t know how to improve comprehension when presenting products for sale. It’s actually pretty straight-forward. Here are several key principles that improve comprehension in communications, whether you are using direct mail, a space ad, a catalog, an email or a webpage.

    1. EMPLOY DESIGN THAT IS IMMEDIATELY UNDERSTOOD

      Organization plays a key role in comprehension. One of the easiest ways to make overall design more decipherable is to organize the presentation so the reader achieves an immediate grasp on what they’re looking at. This might involve a variety of applications:

      • Create features and sub-features, to prioritize your presentation.
      • Use columns, keyed copy, or bold leadins to help readers easily find product descriptions.
      • Employ a grid (invisible or with rule lines) to help organize dense or complex information.
      • Apply universally understood design tools, like page number locations, footer content, and headlines at the top of a page.

      Photography should deliver a clear depiction of the product. There is no time for guessing if the barbecue grill has a side burner, how big the vase is, or whether this dress has pockets. Why crop off the bottom of the pants so the reader is left guessing how the pants fall? Dramatic lighting may get in the way of understanding the fabric’s texture or design. Photography needs to supply a maximum amount of information, immediately. Your art director and photographer need to understand this principle and take responsibility for achieving it.

      Icons can be a wonderful tool to communicate features or benefits at a glance. Icons should look like what you’re telling the reader. For example, for a no-iron shirt, you might use a picture of an iron with a slash through it.

      Insets, call-outs and bullets help communicate features, construction and quality, especially for high-priced products with complicated features. Frontgate would never be able to sell a $5,000 grill without completely dissecting the product and calling out all its features.

    2. MANAGE TYPE SELECTION AND PLACEMENT

      For the benefit of the skeptics out there, all it will take is one read of Colin Wheildon’s Type & Layout: How Typographyand Design Can Get Your Message Across – Or Get in the Way. The book quotes test results and statistics on comprehension levels for various applications of type, headlines, captions and art. Some key principles from Wheildon research:

      • Use serif type, versus sans serif. We were educated on serif type in schoolbooks and newspapers, so it’s not surprising that this principle has become a maxim in the print industry. But serif type really does make a difference in your communications. Wheildon found that a serif typeface like Times New Roman is more than FIVE TIMES easier for average readers to comprehend than a sans serif type such as Helvetica or Arial.
      • Avoid reverse type. It’s harder to read white or knock-out type than black type on a white background. According to Wheildon, when text was printed black on white, readers reported good comprehension 70% of the time, fair comprehension 19%, and poor comprehension 11% of the time. When text was printed white on black, good comprehension fell to ZERO, while poor comprehension rose to 88%. If you have to use reverse type, use it for secondary copy that’s not critical to selling.
      • Avoid color type. It’s harder to read and slower to comprehend than black. And because color type is composed of more than one color, it can get out of register, appear blurry and be harder on the eye, unless you’re using a fifth color on press.
      • Avoid all caps. They are harder to read than upper/lower case sentences or headlines.
      • Long columns are harder for the eye to follow than shorter, managed columns.
      • Use left justified type. Centered type or right justified is much harder to grasp.
      • Captions and copy-blocks belong UNDER photographs , not above them. Newspapers train us to look for copy below the thing they’re talking about. If they can’t be below, then put them to the side.
      • Headlines are most read when they are at the top of a page. Headlines in the middle or low on a page have much lower comprehension scores.
      • Type reads best on white backgrounds. Comprehension starts to diminish when colors or photography is used for type background.
      • Avoid extensive use of bold type . Text printed in bold type is harder to comprehend than regular type.

      Using the techniques outlined above will not only improve your customers’ experience, you’ll increase performance and generate more revenue.

    Glenda Shasho Jones is a consultant specializingin improving brand and performance using creative strategy. She is a frequent speaker and writer and author of The Identity Trinity: Brand, Image and Positioning for Catalogs. Reach her at Glenda@sjdirect.com.

    Author: 

    Glenda Shasho Jones

    The success of your direct marketing communications depends heavily on how well it is designed to help readers grasp your message quickly. But most people—even many designers themselves—don’t know how to improve comprehension when presenting products for sale. It’s actually pretty straight-forward. Here are several key principles that improve comprehension in communications, whether you are using direct mail, a space ad, a catalog, an email or a webpage.

    Postings is a quarterly newsletter from The Direct Marketing Club of New York.

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