The Direct Marketing Voice

Tag Archives: Recession

The Direct Marketing Voice Links 6-9-2009

Posté par admin le June 9, 2009 – 12:57 pm

6 secrets of buyer behavior in a recession

via www.directcreative.com Six things that are particularly important to remember now: * People love to buy. They love to discover wonderful new products and experiences. In America, and increasingly around the world, people see commerce as a natural and appealing activity. * People make buying decisions emotionally. They decide based on a feeling, need, or emotion. That’s why intangible benefits are generally the key to persuasion. For any given promotion, you should ask yourself, “What is the emotional hot button here?”

en•ovation group » Driving the Message Home

via www.en-ovationblog.com Customized mailings help a New England car dealership nudge sales higher. When customers walk into a Prime Motor Group auto dealership to check out its vehicles, they may not drive off with a new car – but they haven’t heard the last of the dealership’s pitch either. Rather, as part of an aggressive follow-up campaign, Prime Motor dealerships get their messages back in front of customers within days, this time in the form of a cutting-edge and highly personalized mailing that is winning rave reviews for its immediacy and detail – and winning the dealership business with its savvy.

Email ‘From’ Line Gaining Importance: Epsilon Study

via directmag.com As a result, a poorly performing e-mail campaign may have less to do with the specific campaign than with the sender’s program overall.

The Direct Marketing Voice Links 6-4-2009

Posté par admin le June 4, 2009 – 8:38 am

dans News & Trends

Assessing the best time to send email

via www.email-marketing-reports.com You’ve probably been through the brainstorming process to draw out a “best guess” time to send. And testing may not be an option if you haven’t the time or a big enough list. So where do you go from there? 1. Look at your past results

Evolution, Revolution: Attention All Marketers – Change Is Gonna Come (and ROI Will Follow)

via gilbertdirectmarketing.wordpress.com * Direct Mail (part 1) — Push Me, Pull You: The chatter I hear every day is that direct mail is dead. Mostly, this is perpetuated by pure-play Internet folks who believe marketing is all about “pull” rather than “push.” I recall in the not too distant past when direct marketers were looked upon by brand marketers as the redheaded stepchildren of the marketing community. Of course, the Internet leveled this playing field, and now all marketers need to be direct marketers to survive.

Ad Overkill May Not Be a Bad Thing During Tough Times

via www.emarketer.com Projecting strength. Banks and retailers should be careful when cutting back on ad spending during the recession. It might make their customers think less of them.

Are You Making These Five Direct Mail Blunders?

via allbusinessarticlez.blogspot.com Here are just five of the common direct mail mistakes I
uncovered that will at best severely limit the effectiveness of your campaigns and at worst may ensure
that you get a BIG FAT ZERO in the conversion column (the only one that counts, by the way) Avoid these mistakes and you will go a long way in your quest to move the needle with a direct mail campaign.

Recession Marketing Example 4 – Openly Addressing the Recession

Posté par Luis Paez le June 3, 2009 – 3:21 pm

dans News & Trends

As part of the recession marketing series here on The Direct Marketing Voice, one of the example’s that you may have read about previously, is the idea of openly discussing the recession in ads. This week Southwest Airlines came out with an excellent series of advertisements on that specific topic. They are now getting much kudos across the board for using this technique while their competitors are completely avoiding the subject. Specifically in the below video, they say “We don’t fly around tough times, how about you?” – which challenges the reader to make a decision for him/herself whether they will be ruled by traditional recession mentality.

Adweek is calling it ‘plucky’ but I consider it just plain smart, as I believe that people in general want to leave the recession behind and get on with their lives. To some extent, companies can both gain new customers and move the focus from recession negativity to that of a healthy approach to the future.

Expect to see this campaign around, as they’re using an integrated marketing campaign consisting of TV, print, Radio, as well as online ads.

Recession Marketing Example 3 – Focus on Value

Posté par Luis Paez le May 27, 2009 – 4:34 pm

dans Marketing Strategy

Our next example in the recession marketing series of posts, is one that everyone is very familiar with – that of value statements. They may appear as dollar amounts in a relative sense to comparable products. They may appear as simple lists of features that aren’t typically included in a product/service. Or the value statement may just recite the obvious fact that there is value. All of these, alone or combined, comprise an approach that focuses “relentlessly on value” as the BillShrink blog outlined.

If you recall the burger joint you may have passed driving in the morning, they may have had a special on their low end burgers calling out “2 for the price of 1“. This is a classic example of focusing on the value that a purchase made at this particular store has for customers. Another related example would be an ad that I recently saw for a website hosting company. The ad basically said:

Web Hosting
Free SSL, 99.9% Uptime, &
Free Domain Name
www.website.net

Even though there was no price mentioned, the value was there. Free goodies and reliable performance focuses squarely on the value inherent in that, and can comprise the entire message, especially on a direct marketing piece. The focus on value often is the hook, and your sales team and customer experience is the clincher. We hope to continue more examples of recession marketing and perhaps next time I’ll post more photos of marketing spotted in the wild.

Recession Marketing Example 2 – Use of Coupons to Drive Business

Posté par Jamie Matusek le May 14, 2009 – 3:43 pm

dans Marketing Strategy

As Luis Paez, blogger for The Direct Marketing Voice mentioned yesterday, we are highlighting examples mentioned in the billshrink blog. The post outlines “12 ways companies are reacting to the recession.” I’m covering the section on “Increased use of Coupon Advertising.”

Inmar, the nation’s leading promotions transaction settlement provider states that coupon redemption increased by 10% in the fourth quarter of 2008. Moving into 2009, consumers redeemed 9% more than in January of 2008. The results go on to demonstrate that coupon redemption is no longer only popular in conventional supermarkets.

“For years, nearly 70% of coupons were redeemed in conventional supermarkets,” said Jennifer Mauldin, President of Inmar Carolina Services Revenue Recovery Services. “But in 2008, the mass merchandiser channel saw a 15% increase in redemption overall, made up by a 20% increase in redemption for food coupons and a 13% increase in non-food coupons.”

So I think it is safe to say that we are all looking for ways to save a few dollars, and coupons are a great way to help consumers do just that. I have personally seen an increase in coupons from restaurants, service providers and retail merchants.

Last year, I MAY have been lucky to receive a coupon once every few months; however, now I receive several offers per week from retailers that I frequently purchase from. They know my purchase patterns and they serve relevant offers to an already loyal customer.

Here is an example of a way to encourage purchase by giving a % off of a particular purchase amount.

Carter's 20% off of a purchase of 50 or more

Other merchants are offering free shipping as a way to help customers save on online orders.

Old Navy Free Shipping

QuantumDigital offers free shipping on printing product orders of $45 or more — a standard everyday offer provided to reward current customers and attract new ones. We’ve also picked our most popular items and offered coupon codes to assist with marketing expenses.

$15 off Jumbo Postcards Mailed

Knowing consumers are redeeming more coupons should spur us all on to look at ways to reward loyal customers and bring in potential new ones.

Here are a few examples to spur some ideas: Offer a buy one get one, an in-store only coupon available on a particular date to drive urgency, use a dollar amount off of a service to get the first appointment, highlight a free appetizer on the purchase of two meals, free shipping to drive internet orders, free service with the purchase of another, dollar amount off for purchasing multiple haircuts, facials or massages at one time, free consultation on staging a home for sale, the list could go on and on.

The key is to not throw just any offer out there, but look at your customer requests for information or frequent purchase patterns and provide offers that meet their needs, wants and desires.

And more importantly, be targeted with your marketing methods. Use direct mail in a more targeted fashion by selecting key demographics that match your customer base or send direct mail to your current customer list. My recommendation, based upon my own marketing campaign response, is to send a direct mail piece and follow it up with an email message touting the same offer. Remember, it is better to send fewer pieces, but to send them to a very targeted prospect using demographic selections rather than doing a blanket mailing to thousands of people.

What ways are you using coupons to drive business for your company?