On November 19, USPS Business Alliance Manager Mike Naples broached a subject many of us new-media-obsessed marketers don’t think about very much: direct mail. Direct mail, Naples asserted, is the work horse of direct marketing. It has measurable results, it’s affordable, and it’s easy to target your best customers.

Lest you think that snail mail has gone the way of the dinosaur and eight track player, consider the numbers: we spend 47 billion dollars annually on direct mail marketing—about 9% the of GDP. Compare that to the 6 billion dollars spent on internet marketing.

Closer to home, think about how direct mail affects you. I, for instance, am a Web developer. I haven’t had a printer hooked up to my computer in at least two years. I tweet. I also have one Harry and David’s catalog, two Coldwater Creek catalogs, and a brochure for the AMA Face to Face training series on my coffee table. A kitchen drawer is crammed with 20% off coupons from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. So even the techiest of the techies are touched by good old-fashioned hard copy, especially when it is targeted precisely to our needs and wants.

Direct mail also has a much longer shelf life than, say, a marketing email, which drops like a rock into the abyss of the overcrowded in-box in a matter of days. (How long have those catalogs been sitting on my coffee table? You don’t wanna know.)

Direct Mail versus General Advertising

The age of mass media advertising is over. Today’s marketing must be personalized and non-intrusive to break through the barriers of spam filters, TIVO, and our general self-trained indifference to advertising. Direct mail, though massive in scope, is not the same as general advertising, said Naples.

General advertising, such as a sign on the side of a bus, sells a product. Direct mail sells offers. General advertising creates sales. Direct mail creates customers—whom you can learn about and collect data from for better CRM and future marketing efforts. General advertising is short, appeals to the emotions, and maybe even tries to make you laugh. Direct mail can use lengthy copy that focuses on facts, and, Naples, says, it makes you money.

Tips for Direct Mail Marketing

• Use compelling offers in your mail: free trials, free samples, free information.
• Size does matter. A brochure tucked inside a standard size envelope outperforms a postcard.
• Make it personal. Send offers related to the recipient’s background, experience, and interests.
• According to the Direct Marketing Association, 42% of direct mail recipients like to respond online. Personalized URLs (purls) allow you to direct traffic to the Web in a highly targeted fashion.
• Direct mail can be used at any point (or every point) in the sales cycle.
• Add a magnet or a sticky so recipients can tack the mail piece to their refrigerator or wall.

With the economy in a state of recession, many consumers are paying close attention to product pricing and contemplating the switch from brand name to generic. Marie Callender’s and Campbell’s Soup are two notable brands using emotional marketing tactics to target consumers. Attempting to maintain brand loyalty, advertisers create meaning for their products by marketing to the emotions of their consumers. This method, called “pseudo-spiritual” marketing, emerged in the 1990’s and with the recession has gained popularity once again. Now consumers aren’t buying for the necessity; they are buying for the emotional appeal of a product.

Marie Callender’s partnered with Con-Agra foods to produce an array of home-style frozen food entrees including chicken pot pie, lasagna, and country fried chicken. Marketers reach out emotionally to consumers attempting to recreate feelings associated with the home and childhood memories. Marie Callender’s hopes consumers will pair compassion and love with their entrees. This is obvious with their slogan, “food from the heart prepared with love and care.” Creating a meaning behind their products helps to build communities of loyal consumers, who won’t stray to generic brands when times are tough.

In this commercial Marie Callender’s uses the childhood memory of baking with Grandmother as a “pseudo-spiritual” tactic.

Campbell’s has been an avid “pseudo-spiritual” marketer since the beginning. Their commercials generate themes of family, love, and meal-time connection. One of their most memorable uses of “pseudo- spiritual” marketing is this popular holiday television commercial.

Similar to Marie Callender’s strategy, Campbell’s has successfully utilized “pseudo-spiritual” marketing to generate strong emotional connections between products and consumers. Both companies continue to maintain their sales and brand loyalty. So next time you pick a brand name over generic, you may want to ask yourself, “why?”

The economy has slowed and for many companies shrinking revenue means much smaller marketing budgets.  Shrinking marketing budgets can shrink results as well so what is the savvy marketer to do when looking for more results with drastically smaller budgets?  They recycle.

Five ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle:

1. Don’t throw out advertising too early - Redefine “worn out”.  Extend the schedules on which you would normally rotate your creative.  This turbulent economic climate leaves your customers and prospects seeking familiarity and stability.  When you find the effectiveness of your current creative waning, evolve what you have by introducing a new element rather than going completely back to the drawing board. For example, a sticker can take care of a change of address on a brochure. And when you do new things, plan with longer life and “refreshability” in mind.
2. Do something with that old bridesmaid’s dress you’re keeping - Reuse favorite advertising campaigns and direct mail pieces that worked well in the past.  Sure, a few things will have changed over the three years or so since you last ran an ad but editing is always less expensive than creating a new piece.  A few updated touches will create something new from something that might be old to you but thanks to audience turnover and poor long-term viewer retention, plenty of people will be enjoying for the first time.   For those that remember it, showing an old campaign can be a way to demonstrate that you are stable and give them a feeling of security.  Many large traditional brands have begun getting back to their roots and re-airing old campaigns for that reason alone.
3. Look in the trash pile - If you hired an ad agency for a project, chances are that they provided you with multiple concepts for earlier projects. Perhaps you can make use of one of the alternatives. There may be a charge to finish the piece, but it’s usually less expensive than starting over.
4. Car pool - See if anyone in your organization has unused seats.  Many organizations are siloed, especially around the area of technology.  Your IT department may have implemented a tool for Operations that might have marketing capabilities which are going unused.  A good example of a tool like this is Microsoft’s SharePoint. While your organization might be using it for internal collaboration, it is also an excellent tool to make external websites, secure micro-sites, promotional pages, and even to manage an electronic prospect dialogue strategy.
5. Switch to electric power - Marketers are still struggling to find ROI from broad use of the newest social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter but one thing is clear already.  The cost of reaching an audience using these tools is extremely low.  While they are not yet (and may never be) ready to carry the weight of a large portion of your marketing strategy this is a perfect time to replace some of the poorest performing media channels you pay for and add some inexpensive social media to your mix.

All of these ideas will be much more effective when used by a company with a well developed brand identity, and if yours doesn’t, there is no better time to focus on building your brand and taking bold brand actions.

Bill Cutshall

Kirsten Cutshall

When John Ellett, owner of local advertising agency nFusion, speaks in front of college groups, it’s an Anheuser-Busch account that gets the most attention. Using interactive marketing, nFusion created a Bacardi Silver brand campaign, The Pick-Up Hall of Shame. The interactive campaign launched in January 2007 and is still running and pulling in viewers.

Yes, you have to be 21 to enter the website featuring all the flavors of Bacardi Silver. So, many of those college students have only heard of, not sampled the brand. After skimming through the over 1500 entries made by site visitors, the real list of Pick-Up Lines is surprisingly small. My favorite line was:

I wish I was a tear, that way I’d be born in your eye, live on your cheek, and die on your lips.

Many of the pick-up lines referenced advertising slogans:

When I studied advertising at Syracuse University, I chose a Bacardi ad for a critical analysis assignment. Through that exercise, I learned my first rule of advertising: Men like to look at women in ads. Women like to look at women in ads.

Bacardi often sells the social aspect of its product. So it was natural to continue the “fun feature” of the branding in nFusion’s campaign. The “Worse Pick-Up Line” feature is very viral. Of the viewers that “stick”, 82 percent of them will share the campaign with their community, add or rate the lines. That is an outstanding metric which shows the conversion of lookers to doers. The viewers spread the campaign through social bookmarking, adding it to their MySpace pages, or by forwarding it to their friends.

While we can’t trace actual sales that result from the Pick-Up Line feature, the Anheuser-Busch executives approve of it enough to let it to run for two years. In interactive marketing, that’s like dog years. I like how nFusion runs the flavor buttons at the bottom of the screen with a new flavor tag for the latest version of Bacardi Silver. The new flavor tag refreshes the content.

Bacardi Silver’s interactive marketing accomplishes the goals of stickiness and engagement with its target demographic. It also has a timeless quality — the pick-up line, “You must be wearing spacepants, because you’re out of the world,” could have come out of the David Bowie disco days of the 70s. There’s no other explanation for such a bad pick-up line. Why do you think this campaign works?

About the Author

Brenda Hessney

Brenda Hessney is a successful Austin marketing specialist with a knack for quickly analyzing, planning, and implementing effective, cost efficient sales campaigns.

Early 2009 and you’re into managing your marketing budget for the year. The annual tug-of-war over a company’s marketing budget between the directors of the marketing department and the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was just a few months ago. Believe it or not, it’s time to start thinking about 2010.

With the downturn of the economy and no immediate positive forecasts, the 2010 budget tug-of-war is likely to get nasty… but it doesn’t have to be. As marketers, we’re trained to identify, target and speak in our customer’s own, unique language. I’ve found that CFO’s have their own language and if you’re willing to slip on a propeller hat and create a spreadsheet or two, your efforts will go a long way in getting your marketing budget approved.

I offer you five simple steps on how to get your marketing budget approved…and even speak to a CFO… if you really have to.

1. Marketing and Sales departments don’t “place nice” – be prepared: In most organizations, each department is focused on their own objectives and less interested in developing “the brand.” Often times, marketing and sales can lock horns with each other resulting in top management to make a choice. Awareness and management of this situation is the first step of getting your budget approved.

2. Ditch the marketing jargon and stop using the word “budget.” Company presidents and C-level executives rarely make it to the top via a marketing route. They don’t speak the marketing language. Smart marketers think of a marketing budget as an “investment,” while many company leaders think of marketing as an “expense.” For awhile, marketers were able to get what they wanted by simply switching these two words around – no more. The presidents and C-level executives have caught on. Today, the smart marketer should speak to CFO’s and company presidents as if we were managers of an investment portfolio.

Treat the term “budget” as a “loan.” CFO’s see the word “budget” and think money will be spent without any sign of returns. “Loan” implies the marketer will return the money with interest. Talk about your company’s marketing channels as different ways to make profits.

Stop using the term “ROI” and start using the term “profit.” Just like portfolio managers. C-level executives understand the word profit and all profit can be measured. Can all marketing ROI be measured? Likewise, stop using the word “cost” and start using the word “value.”

3. Become “metaphor-lingual” in business: Dropping the marketing jargon is step one in communicating (and convincing) the C-level budget slayers to stay away from your budget. When talking to the “propeller-wearing-spreadsheet-people,” use everyday metaphors to better explain marketing. Metaphor example: If you were working in oil or gas exploration and you just started drilling random holes, you’d probably be fired rather quickly. When deciding where to spend marketing dollars, the attitude from CFOs seems to be “let’s drill a few holes over here and a few here and hope it generates some response.” This of course, is the very definition of poor strategic planning for marketing. When speaking to non-marketers, learn to be “metaphor-lingual.”

4. Wrangle the ROI warfare and choose sides: C-level executives are often times obsessed with measuring ROI. When marketers can’t demonstrate or justify ROI, budgets get slashed. There are many ways to measure ROI in marketing, but unfortunately most of the metrics aren’t designed to co-exist. For example, direct marketing mailers focus on cost per sell. Media measurement is all about reach and frequency, while PR professionals are busy counting column inches and brand ROI is measuring brand preference. For large organizations, marketers need to create a ROI “dashboard” and keep all of the metrics in front of you, at all times. In smaller organizations, a marketer needs specific directions and buy-in surrounding the company’s business objectives. These business objectives must be supported from senior management and be measured by the appropriate ROI measurement method.

5. Adopt a culture of ROI measurement and build your plan. You’ve identify the challenges of working with multiple departments, you’ve ditched the marketing jargon, you’re using metaphors and you’ve selected the right ROI metric for your company. You’re well on your way to getting your budget approved. By taking the next 5 steps, you will accomplish three critical things: You’ll create a culture of ROI; you’ll be speaking to a CFO in a language he or she understands and most importantly, you’ll get your marketing budget approved!

1. Build the team – Unite departments, research and c-level management

2. Unify the ROI agenda – Agree to a strategy, set realistic goals and prioritize outcomes.

3. Establish metrics – Determine data sources, set goals and align budget with tasks

4. Communicate – brief agency partners, communicate to every employee and discuss metrics along the way

5. Adjust and review – Measure progress, review the processes and optimize performance and tactics during the process based on the numbers.

It is budget season planning time. Follow these steps and that marketing budget is yours.

About Darren Drewitz

Darren has 16 years of strategic and integrated marketing experience on both the client and agency sides. He has experience in both B2B and B2C marketing, including the multi-location, food, logistics, building & construction and tourism industries. Darren specializes in developing year-long strategic and integrated marketing plans designed to align business objectives with marketing initiatives. Darren lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Melissa and their two sons. Darren serves as an account director for MQ&C Advertising, a 25-year-old, full-service marketing and advertising agency.