OK, so there might be a better name for this, but …
One of the big challenges for marketers who want to understand and drive integrated marketing activity, is how to join up offline and online response analysis. Both sets of reports can be detailed and illuminating. Generally though it’s incredibly difficult to work out where the overlap is. You know that 4.35% of your mailing responded, and you know who they are. You know that you had 47.3% more hits on your website in the days after the mailing landed, and you know an awful lot about what they did on your site. If only you could join the two sets of information …
… then you could really tell the incremental impact of your offline marketing; you could prove the difference it makes to use on- and off-line communications together in the same campaign; you could link directly to the call centre for more meaningful follow-up …
After a bit of thinking and a lot of testing, it turns out that you can do this. And you can do it without having to spend a lot of money for fancy tracking tools. In fact, the technology is all out there, open source, free. All you have to do is use it. I’m showing this to clients now, and it’s really exciting.
Now all I have to do is think of a clever name for it.
Picture: IBM events
Lots of conversations about QR codes.
That’s not so much a headline, it’s the content of the barcode image here (if you need a code reader for your desktop, you could try this one from QuickMark ).
As often seems to happen, most of the conversations are about technology, cost, or how to incentivise a print salesperson to sell them (really).
There are some more useful discussions about how relevant they might be to a particular market (in Japan most mobile phones have a QR code reader built-in; in the UK they are standard on iPhones, but you have to find and install the software for most other smartphones).
And just occasionally there’s talk about how to use QR codes to make a marketing campaign more effective.
Guess where the value is.
I’m following a particular development in direct mail which could be very important to its future. I’m talking to people about it, and trying to stay in touch with what’s happening. That means I’m talking to other stakeholders too, and some of them might be people I would work with, or recommend to others. One of those stakeholders has emailed me a few times in the last couple of months. The last email was from a ‘business development manager’, who asks me “by return”, to indicate “whether I would be interested in a quotation…or would like to be removed from the mailing list”.
It must be nice in your job sir, where the world breaks so clearly into ‘those who would like to buy from me now’ and ‘everyone else that I can wave goodbye to forever’.
Picture: Binary Birds on Wires by Third This
Been working with the nice people at Whitewater on a campaign that we’re getting really excited about. There’s more on their blog here. It’s about finding more powerful ways to connect donors with the work they help to fund. Meanwhile, here’s a more conventional ‘thank you’ to Steve, Richard, Brad and Celia at Whitewater for the opportunity. Good luck to Nick and colleagues at SolarAid too.
Amazing and beautiful mailing from Prada on my doorstep on return from holiday. Beautiful – naturally, that’s what the brand is all about. Amazing, because what you see in the picture here, is the whole contents of the pack. Four words, of which two are the brand name. A strip of gold ribbon on a textured white 3.5mm board. 6 more words on the reverse. That’s it. The outer envelope was equally simple, and they got my name and address right.
This seems to break most of the rules of direct marketing. I think it’s perfect. I have got the message.
I suppose you might be wondering how I get to be on their mailing list, but that is another story.
At a trade show yesterday, someone rolled a large furry dice on the floor in front of me, and said in a cheery voice ‘Talk to us today and get free data cleansing’.
They were talking about working with names and addresses of customers and prospects. They used the metaphor of chance, and positioned data cleansing as a freeby, an incentive. Awkwardly I blurted something about how wrong I thought it was to value personal data that way, and moved on.
The company isn’t doing anything illegal, and they are honestly trying to grow their business and help their clients. They aren’t bad people, they’re just reflecting the perceptions of their clients and the marketplace.
It’s not good, and I wish I knew how to change it.
Encouraging results for a recent test of personalised URLS and landing pages with a subscription publisher. It looks like there’s a 20% uplift on response, despite a few glitches on the way. Some good learnings, and I hope it paves the way to a roll-out and some more campaigns. Time to write the case study …
picture: jurvetson
A couple of new services have launched for UK direct marketers. They both promise to help businesses grow their customer base. They are data products, and they analyse, clean and update existing data, and bring in third-party data for recruitment activity. In one, they promise a quick and easy template ‘for first timers’, and in the next they say that ‘a typical database … could be enhanced and readied for a mailout in 15 minutes’. Oh, and as a special introductory offer, you can get ‘two records for the price of one until 31 August’.
Sorry, it’s not acceptable to let data management be run by a ‘first timer’. Haven’t we learned that pricing of data isn’t about quantity, it should be about quality? This commoditisation of data is a brilliant way of producing junk mail, and I thought we’ d learned that lesson already.
picture: philipn
I am a big fan of Wikipedia, and of the thinking and spirit behind its invention. I’ve seen claims that Wikipedia is just as ‘accurate’ as some of the big encyclopedias. In a world where many students now equate ‘research’ with ‘google’, it’s a popular resource.
So I wondered what a ‘googler’ would find if they looked for a definition of direct marketing. I read the Wikipedia entry with dismay. I read the comments behind the page as well, and was relieved to find I wasn’t the only person who thought it a million miles off the mark.
Who in the commercial world feels they have a responsibility to the world of collaborative ‘free to air’ knowledge sharing? It is a little scary – and embarrassing – to think that such a partial and misleading description of our world is still out there, waiting for one of us to put it right.
picture: Wikipedia
I may not – quite – be the last person to talk about Twitter. It has its fans, advocates and devotees. It is used by some fearsomely intelligent people, and it is being tested and cultivated by a growing number of marketers. New businesses are starting which advise clients on how to use it. And here I am, Luddite, suspicious and sceptical. I’ve been wrong about things like this before.
And yet, I do think that the excitement about Twitter is masking a basic misconception. Twitter at the moment is about social interaction and networks. Maybe it will come to rival or overtake text messaging, and maybe soon. Perhaps it is already starting to create new ways of sharing information and working together. But from a marketing perspective, please let’s not set up yet another medium that operates in isolation from all the others. If Twitter is to be of any use to the marketer, then we have to look at it as part of the conversation, part of the mix. I’m a long way from convinced we’ve understood this yet with conventional media such as direct mail and email, never mind the Next Big Thing.
