If you are looking for ways to create more effective campaigns, be sure to include direct marketing in your strategy. Direct marketing targets known individuals instead of general audiences. This method allows you to be more intentional and personal with the people you choose to advertise to, leading to higher quality results and ROI.
1. Choose Your Households
Non-direct marketing methods will show your message to a general audience. It might be narrowed down by a geographical area or demographic selections, but you won’t know who those people are. With Direct Marketing, you are choosing which households you want to advertise to. While there are different ways you can do this, the most effective is to use modeled data. Modeled data has gone through a statistical analysis to identify which individuals are most likely to buy from you.
We created MicroModeling®, so we could analyze your customers and build a model from what we learn about your consumer base. Next, we run your prospect universe through the model and score and rank each record from most likely to least likely to buy. You no longer have to choose a random sample of records but can select the top scoring records for your marketing list. This process removes excess marketing waste and enables you to focus your efforts on the best households for your business.
2. Personalize Your Ads
Customers are far more likely to pay attention to ads that have been personalized for them. If you are marketing to a general audience, you won’t know who those individuals are and will be unable to do so. Direct marketing lets you know who you are targeting, so you can address the ad to your selected individuals. You can also customize the images and offers specifically for them, creating more relevant ads for your audience.
3. Surround Your Audience
Direct marketing used to be associated with direct mail only, but now, marketers have many channels they can use to reach their audience. Some of those channels include email, social media platforms, display ads, connected TV, and streaming radio ads.
Studies have proven that marketing campaigns are more effective when you use multiple channels together. Create a cohesive campaign and choose the channels that make sense for your selected audience. When you surround your audience with the same message across different platforms, you keep your brand in front of them and give them many opportunities to respond.
4. Collect Data
Since direct marketing allows you to know who your audience is, you will have access to a wealth of information about them. You can use this information to help you understand who your audience is and tailor your offers for them. In order to learn about your audience and create more effective campaigns, you need to collect data.
At the point of sale or lead generation, whether in person or online, create data collection points. Don’t require so much information that your customers get frustrated and abandon their cart but collect enough that you can identify them later. Ideally, you want to get their name and postal address, and if available, ask for their email address or phone number. This information will be extremely helpful when you analyze who responded to your campaign.
5. Identify Responders
After your campaign is over, pull your transaction data. This information can be used to identify responders through a response analysis also called a matchback report. Data scientists will match up who you advertise to with who made a purchase, so you can see how effective your marketing campaign was regardless of which advertising channel they responded to. A response analysis will also capture far more results than identifying responders through PURLs, QR codes, or coupon redemptions since not every customer will use those.
6. Make Adjustments
It can be tempting to look at the results of your marketing efforts and just move on to the next one. But in order to create effective campaigns, you need to make adjustments. What did you learn about your new customers from the response analysis? What worked and what didn’t? Incorporate your findings into the data model, so you can refine your results and get even higher quality prospect data for the next campaign.
Direct marketing allows you to focus your marketing efforts on your top prospects, create eye-catching advertisements, identify responders, and know how to adjust your prospecting efforts. It truly helps you create more effective campaigns and make the most of your advertising budget.
If you would like to learn more about how you can maximize your marketing efforts through direct marketing, reach out to our team.