Ready to Ride 2017 Marketing Trends to Success?

As businesses and nonprofits begin to maneuver through 2017 with their marketing roadmaps, it's a good idea to make sure those plans account for any landscape-altering trends ahead. A recent article by Forbes magazine's CMO Network contributor Daniel Newman, a principal analyst of Futurum Research and CEO of Broadsuite Media Group, outlined the top 10 trends that he sees driving marketing efforts this year. Here are six of his trend predictions that we can see applying to our direct and database marketing clients: 1) a drive for more effective measurement that ties results, including in social media, back to basic business objectives such as profit and customer retention; 2) a greater reliance on marketing technologies and data scientists to support data-driven marketing and integrate strategies, content and customer data across channels, whether that requires an internal chief marketing technologist or outsourcing; 3) prioritized personalization, from ensuring touch points are targeted and individualized to more streamlined, responsive purchasing processes; 4) a surge in the amount and quality of video content, as video, visuals and augmented reality become basic to digital promotion; 5) not only greater use of social media marketing but a shift from generic content messaging to personalized, front-line marketing of sales and services; and 6) a new focus on "right-time marketing instead of real-time marketing," going beyond contact opportunities to using data to isolate the right moment to connect with consumers on the right channel. For all of Newman's 2017 trend insights, read his article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2016/10/18/the-top-10-trends-driving-marketing-in-2017/#2a1c5e797581

Make Holiday Marketing a Gift That Keeps Giving

The holidays are not only a key time for boosting immediate sales, they are also one of the most important periods for gathering data and customers that will generate profit in the year ahead. A new infographic from the Marketo blog provides some good tips on how to optimize your holiday marketing investment for future ROI. First, look at the "ghost of holidays past" and note that both online sales per shopper climbed between 2014 and 2015 and offline purchases (in-store and mail order, for example) also went up. In fact, industries such as apparel saw 11.1% offline sales growth, technology rose 6.5%, and health and beauty climbed 5.1% in offline sales. A strong multichannel data gathering and marketing investment is required if you want to maximize sales moving forward. Meanwhile, in digital marketing, there is no denying the growing importance of social media, with 55% of respondents saying a brand’s social presence has at least some influence on their decision-making during the holiday season. So your strategy should not only boost social efforts during the holidays but keep them strong all year to capitalize on customer relationships. What if you succeed in driving more online traffic but don't reap the conversions desired over the holidays? Don't accept marketing defeat; capture customer information and retarget! This is especially true for industries with "considered purchases," those that are high-cost, high-involvement and life-cycle oriented, the Marketo researchers point out. Just using a Facebook retargeting campaign, marketers report an average 92% increase in impressions, 33% lower cost per action and 26% lower cost per click, for example. And a key goal should be to turn as many new customers captured with those holiday sales into repeat customers. That means a well-thought-out, multichannel retention strategy. The payoff: The average repeat customer spends 67% more 2.5 to 3 years into a shopping relationship than in the first 6 months. For more tips, see the article and infographic: http://blog.marketo.com/2016/11/reap-the-benefits-of-the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year-all-year-long-infographic.html

In Busier Holiday Mail Season, Get Creative to Stand Out

With the mailbox distractions of the election finally past, retail mailers can now focus on the challenge of grabbing recipient attention in a holiday direct mail season that is projected to be even busier than last year's. The U.S. Postal Service just announced that it expects to deliver roughly 15.5 billion cards, letters, flats and packages for the holiday period, with around 600 million packages delivered just between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, representing a 10.5% annual increase. The more successful mail efforts are likely to be those that stand out in the flood of promotions, so if you haven't already come up with something more creative for this year, take some inspiration from Target Marketing magazine's Summer Gould. Her recent article offered four ideas for spiking your creative's holiday punch. First, use direct mail's unique tactile advantages for more interactivity, she suggests, citing endless folds, scratch-and-sniff or coatings as fun options. While it's standard now to urge combining mobile with mail, Gould urges going beyond the standard QR code inclusion this year to augmented reality, a la Pokémon Go. She also pushes the envelope, so to speak, by advising consideration of a video direct mailer. This less-used idea is certainly a way to stand out--as long as you can figure out how to make the video both entertaining and promotionally effective. Finally, she supports holiday-inspired die cuts, a proven boon to postcard response but also a way to create more interactive, complex dimensional mailers. "We have even seen mail take on a whole new shape with each unfolded panel as you open it. This is fun for recipients and draws them into the mailer," she notes. To read her article, go to http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/direct-mail-fun-for-the-holidays/

Data Strategy Can Help Best Amazon With Holiday Buyers

Retailers complain that Amazon e-commerce gobbles up more holiday dollars each year. In fact, Amazon is now the primary gift destination of 42% of U.S. shoppers, per recent research by Signal, a marketing tech and data platform company. Is there any way to compete with the Amazon Goliath? Yes--if retailers know how to weaponize their customer data, argues Signal's CEO Mike Sands in a recent article for Marketing Land. Sands suggests three data-driven strategies for competing with Amazon this holiday season. Sands points out that while Signal's research shows Amazon is a primary buying source for a chunk of consumers, Amazon is NOT the primary gift destination for another big group (40%). Retailers can use customer data to successfully woo those customers, Sands argues. Compared with Amazon, retailers have access to more first-party data across channels and devices via sales, customer service, loyalty programs, marketing and promotion channels, and interactions with store associates. That extensive customer data from multiple channels can by used to deliver relevant, targeted promotions that outdo Amazon's touted recommendations, which often miss the mark due to minimal customer knowledge. Using data-driven marketing, retailers also can leverage the omnichannel strength of multiple touch points to create a seamless, personalized shopping experience. "Gone are the days when holiday shoppers had to choose between the convenience of buying online from home versus the assurance of handling the product in a store. Now they can do it all — and they leave a rich trail of data every step along the way," Sands notes. He points to statistics showing that while consumers say they browse for holiday purchases most frequently on desktops/laptops (36%), they most frequently purchase gifts in stores (33 percent). Finally, since offer relevancy remains basic to wooing customers, retailers can use data-driven marketing to gain an edge over Amazon even in the digital arena. Some 43% of consumers surveyed still say digital advertising on websites or mobile apps influences holiday gift-buying. Retailers now can use addressable media for personalized, timely digital ad targeting by seeing customers as people not just impressions, notes Sands. Bottom line, retailers who make the effort to aggregate, clean, segment, profile and personalize omnichannel customer data can still enjoy happy holiday sales in the Amazon era. For Sands' full article, go to http://marketingland.com/3-retail-strategies-beat-amazon-holiday-season-182228

Mail Boosts Home Services Contractors--If Done Well

Changing seasons signal a burst of direct mail from clients in home services contracting, especially HVAC promotions. And we've seen some great and some not-so-great examples. So we'd like to pass along a timely article from Contracting Business by Matt Michel, CEO of The Service Roundtable, who draws on his experience to create a helpful list of common direct mail pitfalls for contractors. To whet your appetite, we'll pass along just five of the first points in his series of 21 tips on direct mail mistakes. Michel's focus is HVAC contractors, but we think his tips have wider application to a range of consumer mailings. The No. 1 mistake on his list is leaving out a main headline. Yes, some mailers still forget that that they have only seconds to grab consumer attention in the pile of junk mail. But just any headline won't do the job. Marketers need to work hard to summarize appeal in compelling, clear, attention-grabbing text. And that doesn't mean trying to hedge bets with multiple competing headlines; a confused message is the same as no message. Second, remember to play to emotion in the copy and the images; emotion, not logic, moves people to buy, and research has found leading emotional motivators include greed, fear, guilt, exclusivity and need for approval, with convenience and pleasure as icing on the cake. If the images and words in your piece don't touch a nerve, it will get tossed. Third, choose images with people, not product arrays, Michel advises; a parade of boxes, which is all consumers see in pictures of condensing units and furnaces, has little marketing power. Plus, the people pictured should fit the target audience and evoke motivating emotions along with the copy. Fourth, consider the gender of the target decision-maker. Since many HVAC contractors are male, they often make the mistake of marketing to a male audience, but research shows that women make the service and replacement decisions in most households. In that case, images should feature women, and copy should recognize the different emotional triggers of female buyers. And fifth, whether the target audience is male or female, speak directly to the consumer in a conversational and engaging tone. A dry recitation of facts and figures is more likely to bore than persuade. For the rest of Michel's tips, read http://contractingbusiness.com/residential-hvac/21-direct-mail-mistakes-avoid-part-1

Mail Can Boost Home Services Contractors--If Done Well

Changing seasons signal a burst of direct mail from clients in home services contracting, especially HVAC promotions. And we've seen some great and some not-so-great examples. So we'd like to pass along a timely article from Contracting Business by Matt Michel, CEO of The Service Roundtable, who draws on his experience to create a helpful list of common direct mail pitfalls for contractors. To whet your appetite, we'll pass along just five of the first points in his series of 21 tips on direct mail mistakes. Michel's focus is HVAC contractors, but we think his tips have wider application to a range of consumer mailings. The No. 1 mistake on his list is leaving out a main headline. Yes, some mailers still forget that that they have only seconds to grab consumer attention in the pile of junk mail. But just any headline won't do the job. Marketers need to work hard to summarize appeal in compelling, clear, attention-grabbing text. And that doesn't mean trying to hedge bets with multiple competing headlines; a confused message is the same as no message. Second, remember to play to emotion in the copy and the images; emotion, not logic, moves people to buy, and research has found leading emotional motivators include greed, fear, guilt, exclusivity and need for approval, with convenience and pleasure as icing on the cake. If the images and words in your piece don't touch a nerve, it will get tossed. Third, choose images with people, not product arrays, Michel advises; a parade of boxes, which is all consumers see in pictures of condensing units and furnaces, has little marketing power. Plus, the people pictured should fit the target audience and evoke motivating emotions along with the copy. Fourth, consider the gender of the target decision-maker. Since many HVAC contractors are male, they often make the mistake of marketing to a male audience, but research shows that women make the service and replacement decisions in most households. In that case, images should feature women, and copy should recognize the different emotional triggers of female buyers. And fifth, whether the target audience is male or female, speak directly to the consumer in a conversational and engaging tone. A dry recitation of facts and figures is more likely to bore than persuade. For the rest of Michel's tips, read http://contractingbusiness.com/residential-hvac/21-direct-mail-mistakes-avoid-part-1

Survey Shows Holiday Shoppers' Offline-Online Mix

Heading into the holiday season, what should retail marketers do to maximize 2016 holiday sales? Start by asking the shoppers. Global marketing firm Epsilon has just released the findings of its 2016 holiday shopping survey. More buyers are likely to be in-store than online this year; 87% of Epsilon's 2016 respondents say they are “very likely” or "somewhat likely" to purchase at brick-and-mortar stores, compared with the 76% who say they are "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to purchase online. However, the shopping journey will probably involve a mix of channels from marketing trigger to final purchase. More than half (55%) of respondents are "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to look at a product online and then go to a store to buy, for example, while almost the same percentage (54%) are "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to look in store for a product and go online to find the best deal. Clearly, retailers will want to integrate messaging and create a seamless customer journey across channels to prevent dollars from slipping through the cracks in this multichannel environment. Since DBM Designs specializes in direct mail and supporting data services, we're happy to report surveyed shoppers cite direct mail as a potent offline marketing channel, with a big 77% of respondents saying advertisements received by mail will have at least “some influence” on their buying decisions this holiday shopping season. That's a lot more than the 41% who say banner advertisements will have “some influence” on buying decisions. Why does direct mail work so well in an increasingly "digital-first" world? No surprises: Respondents say they are influenced by direct mail because it usually contains an offer or discount, and the format allows for leisurely review time. Retail marketers can't afford to neglect online ads, e-mail and social media, of course; most respondents (90%) say they plan to access online sites or e-mails to learn about the best deals before starting to shop, and that's up from 88% of respondents in 2015. For more data from the survey, go to http://pressroom.epsilon.com/survey-results-indicate-consumers-more-likely-to-shop-in-store-than-online-this-holiday-season/