July 2017

Monday 10 July 2017

Direct Marketing 101

Collective Dynamics Administration 07:24 No comments :

From destroying forests and creating litter to persistent and irritating call centre agents, Direct Marketing has terrible street cred. With all the negative publicity, one would expect that the effectiveness of direct marketing initiatives would be dwindling, but the opposite is true and evident by the ever-evolving direct marketing-related solutions and strategies. Why? Because direct marketing WORKS!

Direct marketing (DM) can be defined as a way of communicating specific and personalised messages to those you know will be interested in your product or service.

It’s just simply a question of where, when and how 😊

Direct marketing loves data

The hot topic of DATA is as relevant, if not more so, in DM Strategies. We probably sound like a broken record to our clients, but can we repeat…. “70% of the success of the direct marketing campaign is dependent on the quality of the data”. You can have the best sales agents, the most amazing product, if the data or the “list” you are marketing to is low quality, the campaign will fail.

The quality of data can be assessed through some basic analytics and testing based on DM and industry experience, benchmarks and expertise.

It's all about retention

When selecting data, priority should be given to ensure a pro-active retention approach. This means quality over quantity, based on the propensity to retain the customer for the maximum period of time. This is where the immediate marketing and sales targets compete with the longer-term profitability results.

Warning: when your initial sales ratios are sky-rocketing, keep the celebratory bubbles on ice, but first wait for the persistency ratios after a couple of months. Most companies embark on ineffective re-active retention strategies, when the initial acquisition costs have already been incurred.

Research, test, adjust, repeat

It is probably obvious that DM is not a one-size-fit-all solution, neither is it an immediate and precise solution. Designing a progressive direct marketing strategy is essential to ensure profitability and sustainability.

One of the key advantages of DM is that continued testing and detailed analytics will limit initial expense and risk while creating the best suited DM strategy for the relevant product and target market.

Through continually analyzing, testing, and adjusting our strategy, we ensure that our strategies are constantly evolving and improving.

Our model:

Data – Product – Distribute Data – Product – Distribute Data – Product – Distribute

Data without analytics is worthless

Detailed analytics and reporting throughout the DM process is crucial, not only to measure the results against the expectations, but to identify trends and anomalies. The IoT and digitalisation has revolutionised direct marketing with omni-channels being used effectively across different market segments and for different initiatives. Gone are the days of simple maildrops!

With various communication tools at our disposal, based on customer preference, across various platforms from telemarketing to digital marketing, direct marketing has become more relevant, extremely cost effective and above all customer centric.

Ready to start your direct marketing campaign? Contact us so that we can discuss a strategy.

5 Reasons Why Your Direct Marketing Campaign Might Be Failing

Collective Dynamics Administration 07:22 No comments :

Have you recently launched a direct marketing campaign, but aren’t getting the results that you expected? With any direct marketing campaign there are many variables that need to be considered. After years of running successful direct marketing campaigns, and collecting data every step of the way, we’ve identified a few checkpoints that could very quickly lead you to the underlying reason for the failure of your campaign.

Having unrealistic expectations

Always start with the end goal in mind. In order to run a successful campaign you need to know where you are heading. Set a realistic expected ROI and then identify ways to work towards that with the resources that you have available.

Beware of starting with an unrealistic desired ROI. Rather, calculate the most likely ROI based on the variables of the campaign such as product, available data, and general customer behaviour in your sector.

Data, data, data and more data

Simply put, the better the data at hand, the better your chances of success.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1. Have you targeted the right market? Have you taken the time to understand your consumers and determined exactly what they need?

2. Did you profile the data? Data profiling is the process of examining the available data and collecting statistics, summaries, and conclusions from that data.

3. How will your data selection affect the long-term results of your campaign? We’ve found that, especially in the financial services sector, it can be easy to find consumers who are willing to buy, but you need to consider whether these buyers will pay the premiums and how long you expect them to remain subscribed.

The wrong product

If your ROI is realistic and your data is up to scratch, but your campaign is still struggling, then your product may be the culprit. There are various elements to consider when deciding on what product to market to your database.

Most importantly, is it the right product for your target audience? Defining the right product may include questioning whether your target audience really needs it, if it comes in at the right price, or if there’s actually a demand for it.

Secondly, consider whether your product is simple enough to sell over the phone. Does the product need lots of explaining for the consumer to see the value? The best products for telesales are simple ones.

Is it your sales consultants?

When it comes down to it, the telesales consultants are the ones who need to convince your audience to buy. Do they have the right product knowledge and do they believe in it enough to sell it? Is your sales system easy enough for them to use?

Train, test, rescript and retrain if needed. Listen to what consumers are saying on the phone and apply this your scripting and campaign moving forward.

You’re not reporting accurately

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, data is vital to campaign success. But so often reporting is neglected. Just keeping track of sales isn’t enough; you need to collect, analyse, and report on all the data in order to determine what the root of success was – so that you can repeat the recipe. Get the right reporting tools and analytics team to identify areas that need improvement, then test and retest until your formula is spot-on.

If you’ve tried all the above and your campaign is still struggling, just contact us for expert advice in direct marketing campaigns.

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