Are direct mail and email like oil and water?

Are direct mail and email like oil and water?Learn how to blend them to gain maximum direct marketing ROI

A whitepaper for direct marketers By B2BDataPartners

http://www.b2bdatapartners.com

Whitepaper

To start with ................................................................................................3

Standalone Direct mail ...............................................................................3

Standalone Email .......................................................................................4

Breaking the myth ......................................................................................5

To Online store, From Direct mail...............................................................6

To Offline store, From Email.......................................................................7

What Next - Your Take Home .....................................................................8

Table of Content

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Whitepaper

To Start With

No industry today can run its campaign depending on a single channel (direct mail or email). It

needs 2 (min.) or 3- 4 channels for a successful marketing campaign. Healthcare industry is no

different. Today, healthcare decision makers prefer marketers/service providers who are

omnipresent. They want to check the sample online before buying the same from the brick and

mortar outlet. There are also some who prefer to be communicated through social networking sites.

Marketers often get confused deciding which channel to take and which one to leave. Some of them

also think that direct mail and email are like oil and water and can never get along well. This

whitepaper is an attempt to break that confusion/myth. Below you will find how both direct mail and

email can help each other to bring in visitors and customers to both online and offline stores.

Before going to how direct mail and email can help each other by sharing their roles and

responsibilities, lets’ read quickly how they are helpful when they standalone.

Standalone Direct Mail

This traditional marketing channel has its own charm.

There are people who still prefer receiving good

offers/discounts in a form of letter/flyers/postcards than

emails. Direct mail does great if:

Sending direct mails to a 6-month or an year old database

and expecting good response is like hope in disguise and

wastage of money. It is necessary to sit and check if all the

addresses are correct, how and when you have last

verified the postal addresses. Managing your data is a

must. Especially, healthcare industry data demands

regular checking

It is send to the right address






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Have nice impressive words/enticing offers and clear call to action

A great offer

The mail has to be interesting, useful, worth reading. Marketers should hire some experienced

direct mail campaign writers who know the exact quantity of each ingredient required to be put in

the direct mail. The direct mail reader should feel good after reading it and feel happy visiting the

offline store. At the end of the mail, call to action should be clearly written. Making them guess what

to do next distract the readers from taking any action at all.

Any promotional direct mail is incomplete without a lucrative offers or discounts. After spending

valuable 5-10 mins reading the mail, the reader surely would like to know what special is there for

him. With your enticing offers, you can stand separate in the reader’s mind.

Standalone Email

Email marketing is a cost-effective, fast and easy to use

marketing channel. In this busy world, executives,

decision makers from industries like healthcare prefer to

be contacted through email. Email does great if

Sending unsolicited mail is a bad practice and unlawful. It

is like intrusion, not only it brings poor or no response,

worst it brings spam complain, black listing, etc.

Content is the king - This works very well with email

content. Each part of the email, from subject line,

salutation, first line, offers, to call to action, and From address everything has to be taken care of.

It’s sent to opt-in list only

Have content free from spam words and false

promises






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Are not untimely

A great offer

Just because with a single click you can send email to thousands of your clients/prospects, it

doesn’t mean you have the liberty to send it anytime and every time. Segment your list based on

various demography, send customized emails, track the response, send the next consecutive

mails accordingly. Email, if not send timely with relevant messages can bring opt-out requests,

spam complaints and low response with poor open-click rate.

Great offer is the eye for any marketing message, email is no different. Give attractive

offers/discounts.

Breaking the Myth

As direct mail and email do great alone in bringing visitors, prospects, clients to offline and online

stores respectively. However, not every marketer thinks and tries to blend them together and use

email for offline stores and direct mail for online stores. To make them believe how they can be

blended well to gain response and increase ROI, given below are two messages coming straight

from the hearts of email and direct mail.






Whitepaper

To Online Store, From Direct mail

Dear Online Store,

Ease:

Add spice to the slice:

A clear call-to-action:

Test, test, and test:

Special welcome:

Win win situation:

Hope marketers will use me to reach you.

Direct Mail

Date: 16thSeptember.10

There are plenty of ways you can use direct mails to bring your prospects and clients to the online website/stores. Given

below are some suggestions:

People who prefer the traditional way - direct mail - as a channel for communication would surely expect simple

ways to reach your online store, if you want so. For them even a long url with lots of hyphen and symbols is a big no. They

prefer it to be small and easy-to-read url, or else they would not bother to pay attention. Providing simple url has more

chances to be correctly typed, because new prospects have no patience to re-type it. Try personalized URLs, they are

really close and personal to your prospects, and they might like to explore it.

Direct mail readers might not be very internet-friendly guys. They will not take a trip to your site,

unless they have something useful to gain and interesting to see. Make your direct mail spicy and saucy with finger-licking

offers like get a free whitepaper, pass for a trade show, $100-$1000 coupons, etc.

Customized: There are marketers who still live in an illusion that one mail can suit the whole list. It never fitted nor will fit.

Attract the reader’s interest and make they feel good to read it to the end by personalizing your mails. Personalize it

wherever possible, salutation, headline, body of the mail, etc., however avoid overdoing it.

Of course you want them to visit your website and do something. But what? Mention it clearly at

the end of the mail by mentioning the exact url they need to type. Say, you want them to register for a lucky dip contest or

want them to be among the first 100 subscribers to win a coupon or discount on the product. Don’t forget to mention the

deadline of the content or offer. Research suggests that this makes the reader act fast, if at all.

Direct mails can be in the form of postcards, letter in an envelope, flyers, self-mailers. You cannot,

again, say that one mode will be preferred by all. Keep testing, see what made each reader respond and keep a track of it.

Next time act accordingly.

Marketers are trying all the possible ways to impress their prospects visiting their website via direct

mail. One such way is a special landing page. The direct mail lovers might find your home page confusing, crowded, and

jumbled. Make their work easy by providing unique landing pages in continuation of the direct mail that made them to type

the url.

By providing a unique landing page for your direct mail prospects you are making them feel special.

This is the right time to ask if they would like to be contacted through phone or email. If yes and your database doesn’t

have their email address and phone number, request them to provide. You can also ask type of information they expect

from you, etc. This way they too will feel good and you will also win their trust and contact details.”

Thanks for your time.

Yours Friendly,






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To Offline Store, From Email

How Email can Help Bring in Crowd to Offline Stores

Like direct mail helping people to visit your online store, email too is a great channel to help bring them to your offline,

brick & mortar store and encourages sale. Given below are some suggestions:

Segmenting your email list based on geography, location, purchase preferences can help you learn

a lot about them. Your next step then will be sending customized mails to them, people staying close to your outlet

won’t mind dropping in there to check the product and offers. Make sure you email has exclusive offers/discounts (for

store visitors) to impress them.

As mentioned above, exclusive offers have a lot of impact on the email recipients mind to decide

whether to visit the store or not. Offer something which is only in your offline store and not in the online store. Don’t

forget to mention the time-line “Discount last….” or “Offer valid till ‘date’”. This will make them act fast and rush to your

stores.

Email gives you the power to reach many more prospects like your subscriber by requesting them to

‘Forward to friend’. Also mention that by doing so they will win more discount or special gifts as Bonus offers on

visiting your outlet. Track the names who forwarded your email, and on their visit make them feel special with bonus

offers.

With email you can attach route map and provide detail address at the end.

Research says many online shoppers don’t visit store because they find it difficult to locate. With detail map and

address you are sending the message that you really want them to visit your store. Another thing is uniqueness of the

store. Is there something, you really want to highlight and think it’s worth highlighting. If yes, mention it in your email.

You never know, the email recipient must be waiting for some interesting reasons to visit your outlet.

People who prefer receiving your emails, don’t say that they don’t like going to your offline stores.

Your online store give them convenience to shop for sure, there are email recipients who prefer to make the final

purchase by visiting the outlet. Sending regular mails keep you front in their mind, and may be today they are not

ready to buy but later can drop in to your store when they need it.”

Thanks for your time.

Yours Friendly,

Dear offline store,

Segmentation:

Exclusive offer:

Bonus offer:

Route map and detail address:

Send regular:

Hope marketers will use me to reach you.

Email






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What Next - Your Take Home

So think again. Going with conventional wisdom or aping a brand’s marketing techniques might not

be a great way of doing marketing. Don’t abstain your products to be promoted through every

channel direct mail, email and social media and see which one or two or all the three suits your

business. Go for it. Please note these are tips and not commandments. Do what suits your

business the most. At the end what matters is your customers and the ROI generated through them.

If you are still in doubt, grab a ready-to-use direct marketing list with both email and postal

addresses, and see the result.

About B2BDataPartners

B2Bdatapartners is a business cycle management company with clients across the world.

B2Bdatapartners have transformed the way businesses work with cutting-edge technology and

business management skills. We pride at offering customized solutions based on the clients’

requirements and business scope.

B2Bdatapartners offers services that will help clients with their complete business cycle. This

includes sales, marketing and customer service. For a business to work smoothly all the three

wings have to work hand in hand. This is what B2Bdatapartners seek to do. With our services and

applications, we help our clients bring all their business processes together and make their jobs

easier.






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Are direct mail and email like oil and water?