In 2016, Celebrate the Marriage of Mail and Mobile

The B2C and B2B purchasing journey increasingly starts on a mobile phone. For example, 65% of consumers start their digital purchase path on a mobile device and 42% of business researchers use mobile in their purchase process, per Google. So what does that mean for non-digital direct mailers? It means it's time to marry mail and mobile! The response synergy between direct mail and digital is already proven. Direct mail will influence 76% of Internet users to buy online, per Exact Target. The first step to a mail-mobile marriage is incorporating gateways to smartphones in your printed pieces. This can be done via QR codes linked to a landing page offer, Augmented Reality (AR) to deliver a persuasive experience such as video, Near Field Communication (NFC) to drive mobile traffic with a tap between phone and embedded chip, and Personalized URL (PURL) to send the recipient to a personalized landing page. Research how U.S. Post Office programs support and reward this technology use. The next step is to make sure your landing pages are optimized for mobile. Tips include use of larger text for viewing on small mobile screens and placement of the call-to-action device "above the fold" of the mobile screen to avoid scrolling. Marketo reports that making these and other mobile-friendly changes to its e-mail templates led to a 28% increase in click-through! The final step is to measure response and ROI across channels. For example, with a QR code, you can create a unique campaign landing page, an individually personalized landing page, or use a special landing page offer to gather contact info. If you are using PURLs, you can embed a campaign identifier or create a unique identifier for each individual. If you send prospects to a landing page, you can create unique offer identifiers or activation codes. If you need more ideas for boosting mail performance, check out the 2016 direct mail predictions of the gurus at C.TRAC interactive marketing: http://www.ctrac.com/2015/12/direct-mail-marketing-predictions-for-2016/

Survey Cites Obstacles to Data-Driven Marketing Success

Despite technology advances and the bounty of "big data," data quality remains the biggest challenge for data-driven direct marketing. Consider MarketingProfs' report on a new Ascend2 global survey of marketing, sales and business professionals. In terms of the most important goals of data-driven marketing strategy, personalizing the customer experience led the field (60%), followed by measuring data-driven ROI (51%) and targeting individual market segments (50%). Then when it came to the biggest obstacles to success, companies put front-end data issues ahead of back-end analytics by a wide margin. Improving data quality was ranked as the No. 1 challenge to data-driven success (59%), followed by integrating data across platforms (51%), raising the level of data analytical skills (38%) and measuring data-driven marketing ROI (37%). In fact, only 16% of respondents rated the quality of their marketing data as "very good," compared with the 27% who rated data quality as "somewhat poor" to "very poor." The majority (57%) called their data "somewhat good," which is just not good enough for the most cost-effective marketing results! For more from the survey, read http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/28904/data-driven-marketing-top-objectives-and-challenges