Direct Marketing Alive and Well on the Web - Article in this month's IMJ

This is an article of mine that was published in this month's Irish Marketing Journal:

All of this talk about the internet having revolutionised the way we do (and get) business has, mercifully, calmed down a bit. Superlatives were clouding the issue, making the Web appear to be an unfathomable quagmire of buzzwords where traditional business rules no longer applied.

Not so. Marketers are finding that a lot of conventional techniques work perfectly online. As a result, more and more are digging out the time-honoured direct marketing manuals. Armed with the techniques that traditional direct marketing espouses, we are discovering the truth about the Internet: that most businesses, in most industries, can be successful online. It’s just a matter of listening to your forefathers.

In fact, the Web and direct marketing make the perfect couple. Let’s look at a couple of real-life examples that prove this point.

The first lesson learned by budding direct marketers is that the offer is all-important. Giving away a free trial, sample, or complimentary report can increase the response rate exponentially. A discount works as a good incentive too. Visit a few of the better-known travel and hospitality websites – they’re all doing it. With a bit of creative thinking, you can adapt it do your industry.

Then you’ve got to get your offer, and your product, across with your copy. Headlines, subheads, indented paragraphs, the PostScript (P.S.), and so on. Internet users are used to scanning pages quickly – no-one likes reading too much on a monitor, so copy needs to be written for users who glance over it. Headings, bold text for emphasis, and different colours make it more likely that visitors will get your key selling points. Headlines to work on include the main heading of your homepage, the subject line of outgoing emails, and the headlines in your pay per click campaigns. Another factor to consider is that, just as with the headline, almost 100% of Google users will see the top three results – and will probably click on the one with the best headline. If your site isn’t in front of them when they search for it, you’ve got work to do.

The advent of the customer database revolutionised direct marketing. Customers and prospects can be targeted by gender, area code, previous purchases, and demographics. Treat email marketing with care – for a start, you have to work with a database of users that have given permission to receive your emails. Within this framework, smart email marketers segment their databases. Amazon send me emails with offers on Pacino films and Paul Weller CDs because they know that I’ve bought these in the past. Audible.com send me offers on business books, because they know I’m more likely to buy those than Dan Brown’s latest novel.

And you can be sure that Amazon and Audible’s success is based on solid testing. All direct marketers know the value of testing, while realising that it’s potentially the most difficult part of the process. The Internet makes this process very easy. Tracking visitors through campaigns to purchase can be done cost-effectively, and you can easily run A/B split tests on different ad creatives, email subject lines, landing pages and pay per click campaigns. In fact, high-end tracking software can automatically optimise your campaigns in real-time, ensuring you get maximum ROI from your online spend.

Most importantly of all, Web marketers need to learn the simplicity of direct marketing. Direct marketers are obsessed with return. They want to see sales, orders, enquiries, trials, new customers. For them, it’s more about acquisition and retention, less about brand awareness. The dotcom meltdown taught us that, while branding is necessary in marketing, actually increasing your sales and market share can be quite nice too if you want to stay in business. So try some of these suggestions – they may not be sexy, but they’ll work.

Comments

[Sighle]

keep it simple! didn't know you liked the pacino films!

[Michelle]

love the article Dave, good to see that you're using tried and tested methods! michelle t

[Des]

Hey Dave, just read it in the IMJ and said I'd check the blog. Did you just post it? Great article, shows what you know about old-skool direct marketing.