7 Integrated Direct and Digital Marketing Tactics

To stay competitive brands need an integrated direct marketing program, with clear, concise messaging across all channels, to boost consumer engagement and conversion rates. This is best accomplished by looking at your media landscape as a whole – not just the individual parts, and understanding how consumers engage with your product or services. Today’s consumer expects more from brands; personalization, relevance, convenience, simplicity and value. Below are a few tips that work.

1). Direct and digital integration strengthens your brand and also gives your prospects who did not respond to your direct mail, email or banner ads another chance to see your message. GRI crafted a 3-tier integrated program involving direct mail, email and telemarketing for a large IT services company. This turned out to be the most successful lead generation program the company had ever had producing a pipeline of $20 million in new business in 6 weeks!Direct mail and email marketing generated the interest, but the follow-up telemarketing was key to the explosive sales activity that followed.

When testing an integrated direct and email program, it is important to know the in-home arrival date of the direct mail package.  Then you can test whether it is best to send the email before the package delivers, after or to send multiple emails.

2). If a prospect clicked on your email or site ad but abandoned the targeted landing page, tag the prospect and serve them banner ads as they browse the internet.  Retargeting keeps your brand in the prospects peripheral vision and top of mind. These gentle ad reminders can prompt the lost prospect to return to your site and convert often at a higher rate, and many times with an increased average order value.  Retargeting is also a good media to try on renewals.

GRI worked with a major NY publisher, retargeting prospects that had abandoned their subscription page. To re-engage them, banner ads with a new offer were displayed on other sites the prospects visited. The results were outstanding, increasing conversion rates by over 217% and a 350% ROI!

3). Integrating Inbound marketing into your media mix through great content, calls to action and landing pages can reduce your cost per lead while delivering higher quality prospects. In fact, according to Hubspot, the cost of an inbound lead is 61% less than an outbound lead!

To generate more traffic and leads to your website, create compelling content that is helpful and has a high perceived value to the reader. Position this content as a free report, whitepaper or e-book in your direct and digital marketing. Be sure to include prominent calls-to-action that are linked to a targeted landing page.

You can also spin this content into social media blogs – companies that blog 6 to 8 times a month double their lead volume.

4). Utilize Smart CTAs to make the prospect’s experience more relevant and personal.  Smart CTAs allow you to display a different button and content to different types of visitors based on available list data or where on your site the customer has visited or shown interest.

5). Consumers are attached to their mobile devices using them for searching, shopping, social and buying. Through text messaging, apps and QR codes, companies offer special discounts, coupons and content. Most smart devices have a GPS transmitter and can track where users are when they post online. Many consumers now willingly use this to check in to places to share their location. This is huge for targeted marketing where ads can be targeted based on a set radius, profile people based on their travel and location patterns and deliver relevant campaigns. That is why it is vital to have emails, landing pages and ads optimized to render correctly on mobile and all devices.

An example of integrating, direct mail, mobile, inbound marketing and retargeting with a very personalized message is to place a QR code on your direct mail piece anywhere. The QR code links a consumer to a personalized URL (PURL). A PURL provides a Web address for an individual so the content at that address can be unique for that visitor, and marketers can create unique QR codes linking to PURLs for everyone on their direct mail lists. This online interaction can be tracked, making it easier to measure in terms of campaign ROI.  The text PURL can, of course, be put on a direct mail piece in conjunction with a QR code, allowing recipients to manually type it into a Web browser if they don’t have smartphones or would rather engage from a computer. This also drives traffic to your site as the purl is linked to a personalized, relevant landing page. Retarget consumers that abandoned the landing page by serving banner ads on other sites they are browsing.

6). According to Harvard Business Review, while email open rates are at an average of 20%, messaging gets 98% open rates.  Chat bots is a software that communicates with your customers inside messaging apps enabling you to reach younger markets.  Businesses can use chat bots as part of their online customer service and social marketing to increase sales or leads.

7). Video, webcasts and audio marketing is a potent way to get the consumers attention and build your brand. Video on social channels and in email is more active and interesting than text and can include a call-to-action with an offer that drives the consumer to your targeted landing page.

Providing a product video on your site allows the consumer to see exactly what they can buy and how it works, in just a few minutes. The consumer is able to better engage with the product, see the benefits the product will bring to them, and ultimately be more likely to purchase it. Consumers were found to be up to 85% more likely to purchase after watching a product video and stay on site an average of 2 minutes longer when engaged in video. And, video marketing is perfect for the power of sharing where it can be spread across the world very easily and very, very quickly. Or, video testimonials are another way to engage your audience with a message from your customers.

GRI works with brands of all sizes on their integrated direct and digital programs. If interested contact us for a free consultation.