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Tag: personalization

  • Marketing Automation Can Go Too Far

    Marketing Automation Can Go Too Far

    With as many digital marketing programs, apps, platforms and dashboards as are currently available to the modern marketer, clearly marketing automation is an idea whose time has come. But at what point does all that automation start to mask, hide, obfuscate and cloak the real goal of the marketer – to persuade, influence, elicit emotion and garner a specific reaction by connecting in some emotional way with the individuals who make up the target market. If the machines are deciding the timing, tone, quality, frequency, subject matter and even copy point priority, is there really a relationship being created there?

    While I’m still emotionally a bit of a luddite when it comes to technology, I understand it’s uses and marvel at its potential to make our lives easier, and more productive, alleviating the drudgery of some of the more mundane daily tasks and delegating the type of “step, repeat” activities that make up our daily existence to simple machines. However, there are limits to the level and type of task I’m willing to relinquish to the machines. The little voice in the back of my head that warns “If it can do this, what else could it do if I don’t keep control over it” is running that script more frequently when I take a few moments to fill the que of my social media automation platform. It speeds up knowing that the machine will be totally in charge of what people see, when they see it, how often they see it. Relin       quishing that level of control is a little scary.

    Now, take that a step further. The next generation of software is likely to have wider permissions within your physical and online universe. It’s possible, given the necessary set up structure, for a similar platform to deliver a message to a given recipient, with the ability to search their hard drive and cloud account, dredge up bits of information gauge their reactions to online posts by others, collect viewing habits for photos and videos, and be able to piece these disparate pieces of data together into a coherent letter rife with personal references that only make sense to them. Its invasive, it’s creepy, it gives the recipient a sense of exposure, but if crafted correctly and reigned in appropriately, it would be so personal and so relevant, it would out-pull almost any generic control letter by a factor of 10. Are you scared of the machines yet?

    Currently, the overuse of personalization typically takes the form of using the person’s name or address or other key piece of publicly available information too many times. The only damage there is to the sender, as it pulls back the curtain and exposes the use of data in the letter, destroying the illusion of personal relations and destroying trust. This depresses response, but doesn’t hurt anything. But taken a notch further, say that same letter is riddled with personal information, including images of your home and kids, banking and financial “hints”, information about your mortgage or car loan, the kids’ school names or addresses, extracurricular activities. Looks and sounds personal, right? Now imagine that letter is stolen out of the mailbox, or picked up out of the delivery bin before it even gets to you. The person with ill intent now knows more about you than they could ever discover any other way, and can use that data to do anything they want, unfettered by regulations, legislation, professional ethics or legal restriction.

    Used correctly, personalization and data “injection” can make messages feel relevant, feel familiar, feel comfortable, and lead to a positive response. Used incorrectly, personalization can open the door to abuse, cause damage to both the sender and the recipient, and lead to a range of problems from minor headache to legal action. When employing automation for driving or disseminating marketing messages, best to err on the side of caution and keep your human fingers in the pie at critical points – just to be sure everyone stays on good terms – be careful out there . . .

  • Get Top Results When You Crank Up the “Direct” in Your Direct Mail

    Get Top Results When You Crank Up the “Direct” in Your Direct Mail

    By its very nature, direct mail promotions are designed to be one-to-one communication vehicles. As marketers, we are all aware of this in the back of our minds, but in practice, sometimes the “direct” portion drops off the map, and we end up producing unplaced promotional brand ads in an envelope. If you want o see the best returns possible from your direct mail program, make sure the “Direct” angle gets full attention.

    There are several ways to rev up the “you” in your programs. The most effective one starts with the concept of the mailing itself. As you envision the final mailing, conceptualize your offer, the list, the copy platform, the thematic graphics and other elements, get a good fix on your target audience for this particular mailing.

    The “It” Person

    Now take this to the next level, and picture in your mind a specific individual who fits the descriptors and parameters of your typical customer in your target market. Ask some key questions about your mailing with regard to this person: 1) Would this mailing appeal to this person? 2) Is the offer suitable for them and their needs? 3) Would this copy and these graphics attract their attention and resonate with them in an emotional way? 4) Is there enough reason for them to respond, to pay, to write a check and send it in?

    If the answer to any of those questions is no for that mythical person in your head, then adjust, correct, edit and revamp until the answer is yes to all of them.

    Copy is King

    Many of these personal elements start with the copy. Often, the offer is what it is, and either can only be changed minimally to match the audience or is inviolate based on the time and resources available. If you’re in that box, then the solution is to start with the copy.

    The word “You” is extremely powerful – indeed, you can’t write a true direct mail piece without it. If your copy speaks directly to that person in your mind, you are by fiat having that one-to-one conversation, and must use “You” to address that person directly, in first person voice. In today’s highly digital climate, the use of a person’s name in the copy is almost passé, but you would be surprised how little it actually gets used, aside from personalized laser letters. For postcards, fixed multi-page packages, and other formats, digital technology allows for the use of the recipient’s name and other information in repeated appropriate fashion, to juice up your message and really push the audience’s emotional buttons. This will drive your point home almost as powerfully as the word FREE in the offer, and will draw in the reader and involve them in your description and your message.

    Good copy for direct mail should tell a story. Listing benefits, describing features has its place, but the meat of the piece is a message directly specifically at the reader like there is no one else around, and it’s just the two of you having a short conversation. The story should be illustrative, persuasive, cohesive, and have a point. No matter how long it is, (and there are endless debates about copy length – see Hershel Gordon Lewis for details on both sides) you should make a point, explain why your point is the best, make your point again, and get out after asking for the order.

    Let the Data Be Your Guide

    To be able to write persuasive, effective copy, to concoct an effective working offer, you have to really know the audience. You can get to know the audience, but to do that, some research is in order. Carefully select your list to be as homogeneous as possible, to select as many similarities as you can to define the audience as finely as you can. That list if selects is the basis for your research. In order to get to know those people (and a market never bought anything, people buy products), you have to have an actual conversation with a few of them, to pick up the subtleties, the similarities and the things that really push their buttons emotionally that get them going, that get them excited.

    To help visualize the audience better, pretend to have a conversation with someone representative of the target group, and ask yourself these questions:

    1) How does this person speak, what word choices do they make?

    2) How do they synthesize the information you are presenting? Do they parrot it back to you verbatim, or do they absorb, summarize and paraphrase your concepts?

    3) Do they pick up and use any jargon you use related to the product?

    4) Does the product seem to be something they need, or just want?

    5) Do they seem to understand the product you are offering or are they just being polite?

    These ideas should give you plenty of ammunition with which to shoot down your current work and start from scratch, to really personalize your direct mail and make them truly “Direct” to the audience. Apply these techniques to your last project, recreate it with the new approach, and A/B test it against your control – you will be surprised at the results.

    If you thought this makes sense, and you’d like more information like this sent right to your inbox, subscribe to my blog above right, and don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Integration and Personalization Keys to Success

    Integration and Personalization Keys to Success

    Every marketer is trained from the beginning of their career to attempt to get the most value from their marketing dollars – everyone knows that they’re scarce enough without wasting them! Usually that means running leaner, tightening expenses, negotiating fees, cutting costs, avoiding waste. These measures assume that there is nothing you aren’t doing to boost performance, increase awareness or response, extend reach or build frequency, expose the brand more widely or selectively. One of the most effective strategies we’ve seen pay off is media integration to drive support of the central message.

    As it turns out, American audiences like a choice. Who knew . . .? But good direct marketers know that if you offer a prospect too many choices, they may make none at all. No joy there. But if you offer them a choice and they don’t know you’ve done it, everybody wins. That’s what media integration is all about, creating those choices in the background. And, as an added bonus, which choice the buyer makes tells you something about them, absolutely FREE!

    Picture a barstool (don’t lie, we KNOW you’ve seen them). They have three or four legs and a seat, or platform. The level of effectiveness of that device degrades in direct proportion to the number of legs – start removing legs and the stool gets less stable to the point where it won’t stand alone, or even becomes dangerous. You can sit on a one-legged stool, but it’s not for the feint of heart! On the other hand, a five or six-legged stool can become unwieldy or unstable too – keeping all those legs the same length and flat is a challenge, or at best the extras are redundant and wasteful.

    What do barstools have to do with marketing? An integrated campaign to build awareness or drive enrollment or response can have several types of media integrated, each adding to the stability, and the effectiveness of the campaign, each message supporting the other media and the offer platform, like the legs of the stool.

    Say you were promoting a conference. You have a great list of prospective attendees, responsive, accepting of the brand, happy evangelists for your organization. You have good, extensive file info in each record, including phone number, mailing address, e-mail address, some transactional info and more. You’ve got a terrific speaker line-up, a highly relevant topic, a great location. Sounds like you’ve got a good shot at success, but here’s how to maximize the number of bodies in those seminar seats – tell the prospect about the conference in multiple ways using different media.

    You could mail to them, and the mailing could include a PURL that leads to a personalized landing page that showed their participation with your organization in the past year (or what they missed, in the case of a newbie). You could also send them a personalized e-mail with a slightly different PURL link embedded in it, that drives them to another page that shows their best choice in hotels or dinner location. You could also launch a robo-call or volunteer phone bank call a few days before the conference, directing them to the registration site for a last minute discount on airfare from a consolidator/partner. The e-mail also has a phone number included for audio registration, the e-mail has a reply feature for questions, the phone call lists an e-mail address as well as the web registration site address, and the registration page has a phone number for inquiries. You’ve now come at the prospect from three different directions, sent essentially the same message (attend this great conference) but shown them different facets of the conference, shown the benefits in the outgoing vehicles, and given them a choice as to how to respond to you (mail, reply e-mail, web registration, return phone call). Plus, the way they choose to respond or register tells you what mode of communication is the most convenient or effective for them, information you can use to reach them more effectively next time – FREE!

    Those three directions are the legs of the stool – each media supports the message platform, and feeds the other media: web, e-mail, voice, print mail. This sort of campaign might make it tougher to discern just exactly what is driving response, but as long as the response is strong and the meeting is full, the job is done, and most of these are trackable now so that dilemma isn’t as problematic as it once was.

    You can drive response to one media or another, but giving the prospective attendee a choice as to how they want to respond increases your odds of a response almost exponentially. Personalizing each medium makes each more effective than the generic version, further strengthening the campaign. By adding to your integration scheme with low-cost supports, (e-mail, and volunteer phone calls) you’ve maximized your resources and gotten the most bang for your buck, in some cases doubling or tripling your effectiveness, without doubling the cost.

    Check the campaigns you have running and see if they could benefit from an integrated approach. It may be a little more work, even if you re-purpose elements like graphics, copy, forms, e-mail templates etc. but the results are definitely worth it.

    If you found this valuable, and would like more like this delivered to your inbox weekly, just subscribe to this blog above, and don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

  • Personalization Boosts Response, But Can Be Overdone

    Personalization Boosts Response, But Can Be Overdone

    We’ve seen studies, a few released very recently, that suggest that personalization of direct marketing materials, including print and e-mail, boosts response significantly – in some cases as much as 3-400% of the blind “A” side of the test. But there was an interesting study among them that perhaps showed the risky downside to this type of approach. Apparently, personalization CAN be overdone. But you’d be surprised how far you have to go . . .

    The study we read told of a DM control package that had been declining from fatigue after nearly 6 months of heavy mailing. The commissioners of the test decided to test personalization, but in a new way. They personalized the letter in multiple places, and progressively added incidents of personalization as the letter progressed, per segment of the test. Segment One was mailed to a random list select of the house list, and contained a personalized greeting. Segment Two was mailed to a similar random list pull but the letter had a greeting and another incident further into the body of the letter that was personalized. Segment Three was mailed to a similar list and contained three incidents of personalization, and so on. All data was composed of elements contained in the address block of a five-line address containing job title and company name.

    When the results were read and analyzed, the staff was astonished to see response rates continue to rise through segment 14! In a two-page marketing letter there were fourteen instances of personalization before the results started to flag. The package didn’t drop back below profitability until Segment 22! Clearly, people like reading about themselves, and as a result, feel you know them and are safe to buy from! The rise of the rate was roughly linear from one incident to 14, and tailed off sharply from 14 to 22 and dropped off less sharply after that. Seems it takes a lot to overdo personalization, at least as used in this study.

    I get the feeling that most mail package probably wouldn’t get to 14 before dropping off, based on how much imagination is usually put behind this portion of the marketing effort. Just dropping the name in the copy 14 is not going to do it! To test this, simply read the letter out loud to yourself.

    Have you ever been engaged with a retail sales person who had only gotten partially through their “Training” but got to the part where they were told to use the customer’s name whenever possible to help “connect” with the customer on a personal level? The overuse of your name in the conversation in unnatural places becomes annoying, then grating, then off-putting to the point where you want to stop the interaction and walk away.

    With that experience in mind, read your letter out loud and see at what point your tolerance for the use of your name and other info seems to peak. Now, subtract one incidence, and that’s likely the sweet spot for that particular letter or package. Now you have a baseline, and can test above and below that number and see how accurate your initial read was.

    Keep in mind, too that there is a gold mine of information in that address block, if you’re willing to make a few leaps. If you have accurate salutation and prefix information, you likely know marital status, gender, and to some extent, age. Ms. Brittany Jacobs isn’t likely to be 75, or married, or likely to buy orthopedic shoe inserts or support hose. You get some of this at least in a reinforcing capacity, from your list segmentation selections. And you can use all parts of the address block beyond the address.

    There are data overlays that can be appended based on zip code that can give you a read on income, age, and other data down to the block level. Combine that with the job title info, and you have a pretty good picture of your prospect. Use street names, city and state info, job title, whatever you can to build a box of credibility around your offer. Now you just have to find a creative way to work those elements into the conversation so that they appear to be accurate but are really vague. If you’re having trouble with this, try imagining you’re setting up a fortune teller booth at a carnival – they use this same technique to read cues from you to weave a story that sounds believable. It’s like they KNOW you!

    This may seem deceptive, or underhanded, sneaky, etc. but ethically all you’re doing is making some educated guesses, and feeding the information you have that is freely available back to the audience on a specific basis – nothing sneaky about that! Let your creativity run wild, build a conversation with as much credible personalization as you can – you’ll find it gets harder once you get above 7-8 incidents. And now that you know that the average person’s tolerance level is higher than that, go for it!

    Test personalization on your next package, and see how much it boosts your response – in today’s digital world, there’s no reason not to . . .

    If you found this information valuable, and would like more of it, be sure to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes” . . .