If you are a direct marketer, you are mailing your lead list at the mercy of regulatory costs (postage) and printing costs (paper and ink). While DM may work very well for you, incorporating email as a part of an integrated marketing strategy may show a nice boost in sales.
Integrated marketing? Yes, incorportating many touch points through different advertising medium. For a fraction of the cost of direct mail, you can follow up your postcard piece with a similar email marketing message that touches on the points the postcard did not. That’s two touch points giving your customer more exposure to your services and your brand hopefully at a prospective buying time. What if you purchased a banner ad in a well-read trade publication that your contacts will surely be reading. That’s three touch points. Did you swap a newsletter text link with a non-competiting business development partner? That’s four touch points.
Now this may seem like brand overload to some contacts, but if thought about intelligently and delivered just as the last placement was forgetten about, an integrated marketing strategy very well may boost business.
So, I told you email should be a part of these multi touch strategies. Why?
Direct, pertinent information to your customers and instant feedback as to what customers are interested in what products/services. Start with email, send to your entire list with a few differentiating links. Track who is clicking on what and form groups based on this information. Next, send a Direct Mail piece to each group that has information that pertains only to that group. Follow up by negotiating advertsing real-estate in the trade publications that each group may be reading.
Email makes the cast-a-wide-net marketing approach into a sharpshooter approach. It focuses your messaging and makes very clear who your groups of contacts are. It is a waste of your money to send me information regarding watches when I really wanted to know about digital cameras. Email will help solve this problem in an inexpensive way.