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The best laid
marketing plans have no value unless they're executed, the results are analyzed,
and the data from the analysis are used to maximize the campaign's success.
Here are some components of campaign execution and analysis:
- Ad Insertion
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You have a powerful ad. It really speaks to
your target market person, and it calls them to your desired action. But
where will you place that ad? The answer to that question is more critical to the ad's success
than the ad itself.
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Successful
marketing, first and foremost, is about talking to the right people. So
inserting the ad in media used by your target market is crucial. More
than that, inserting the ad on pages, or in time slots frequented by
your target market is required for maximum results.
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The more precise your ad placement, the more targeted the ad's copy and
design can be, creating a powerful synergy.
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To
effectively use each medium, you have to know its strengths and
weaknesses, and what part of the marketing process it's equipped to play:
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- Newspapers -
broadly targeted, can provide some detail
- Magazines -
more targeted, but less frequent, good detail
- Radio -
broadly targeted, directs people to other media for details
- TV -
expensive, broad targeting, good for products with visual appeal
- Web - good
targeting available, low cost, can provide great detail
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Each
medium is capable of playing a part in the marketing process, and a
strong Web site can play a powerful role in completing the process for
any of the other media.
With a well constructed Web site you can refocus most of your other
advertising to drive people to your site, where there are no time or
space restrictions.
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And, in
many cases, the order can be taken and executed right on the
site.
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- Direct Mailing
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Direct
mail, when effectively executed, is a powerful advertising
vehicle.
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It's
highly targetable, because lists are available for almost every kind of
person alive, and the technology for refining and focusing lists
is astounding.
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This
targeting precision is critically important to a direct mailing, because, as we said above,
addressing your message to the best possible prospect is the most
important factor determining the campaign's success. The list...it's
always number one.
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Following
right behind the list is the offer. If what you're offering, and the
terms by which you're offering it, are not compelling to the target
market, they'll yawn and you'll go broke. This is where your Unique
Selling Proposition (USP) comes into play. If a strong USP is right up
front in a well crafted letter, and it's addressed to the
optimum target market, you're most of the way home.
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Of
course the design and layout of supporting printed materials are not
without impact, but the list and the offer carry the vast responsibility for
success or failure in a direct mail campaign. And when it comes to those
other supporting materials, such as:
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it
comes in handy to have multi-million dollar direct mail sales
experience.
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The
kind of experience that also wins industry recognition, resulting in the
coveted DMA
ECHO Award. With
successful experience in both direct mail advertising and Web site
development, Content and Design is uniquely qualified to help your
business or organization maximize the synergy of these two powerful
mediums for your benefit.
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As with other media, direct mail can now be
used to drive prospects to your Web site. Depending on your target
market, and the percentage of prospects with Web access, you could
potentially use a much less expensive direct mail package, relying
instead on the Web site to provide the detail and response generation
normally created by a more extensive package.
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- Telemarketing
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Nothing
strikes fear into the heart of a business or organization manager like
the term "telemarketing." They hear or read that word, and
their brain says, "Red
Alert...intrusion...interruption of people's dinner... aggressive
hucksters...rude people with bad accents making my prospects, customers,
members angry."
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It's
true that some people have used it that way, but telemarketing's come a long
way over the past few years. Today telemarketing is more often a
component in a mix of communication channels between marketers and their
prospects and customers. In fact, there's a
good chance you're using it right now and don't really think of it as
telemarketing.
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Do
you:
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- Take orders
over the phone?
- Handle
customer service questions over the phone?
- Call
customers or members with special offers?
- Call
customers or members if they're delinquent on a payment?
- Call
customers or members to take surveys or do other research?
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These are legitimate uses
of telemarketing. Most of these calls
are appreciated by the customer or member, if the telemarketer is
cordial and sensitive.
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The
most dreaded kind of telemarketing, of course, is the outbound version.
But, in today's permission-based marketing environment, few of these
calls are the totally unsolicited, unexpected kind that make people
cringe. It's much more
likely the marketing organization has established some kind of
relationship with the call recipient before the call is made.
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This,
again, is where a Web site can be a powerful component of your marketing
mix. You can offer free information, a free analysis, a free estimate,
whatever fits your business's or organization's purpose. Then ask the
site visitor to give you enough information to get the free offer back
to them. If you ask and they give you their phone number, your outbound call to them
is no longer unsolicited...it's permitted.
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At
Content and Design, we understand permission or "opt-in"
marketing. We can help you elegantly interweave your communications
channels, especially your Web presence, to assure that any telemarketing
effort is permitted or even expected by each recipient.
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- Direct E-mailing
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Direct
e-mailing is the Web-based cousin of direct mailing, but there are
substantive and crucial differences. Direct e-mailing can be more
effective, lower-cost, and rapidly-deployed, but it must be done right.
And we believe that requires a permission-based approach.
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According
to the Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Boston technology research organization,
"Traditional direct mail campaigns generate responses ranging from
1% to 2%. Aberdeen research has found that e-mail marketing campaigns
generate response rates that range from 10% to 15%, depending on the
level of targeting and personalization."
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"Internet
advertising expenditures in the U.S. will increase from $1.3 billion in
1998 to over $13 billion in 2003, with more than $8 billion dedicated to
online direct marketing."
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These
numbers are based on opt-in or permission-based direct e-mail campaigns,
not unsolicited e-mail blasts. What's the difference?
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Unexpected
or unrequested direct mail advertising is often called "Junk
Mail." Some people love it, others hate it, but most agree it's a
fact of life they just deal with day-to-day. However, unexpected,
unrequested e-mail is called "Spam," and recipients are not
nearly so indulgent as they are with regular advertising mail.
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At
Content and Design, we work with the world's most respected opt-in
direct-email service providers, to create and execute effective
campaigns. Campaigns that generate good will with clients, prospects, customers, or
members. We do not involved ourselves in massive unsolicited e-mail
campaigns. So, if you want to develop an effective, long-lasting direct
e-mailing strategy, let us help.
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- Order Processing
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When
doing business on the Web you have a variety of ways to process orders.
If you're already processing phone or mail orders, you can simply add your Web orders to the process. If you
already have credit card merchant accounts, you can run your Web
orders through those accounts.
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But,
you can also do all the order processing automatically through a Web
shopping cart program, especially if it's linked to a payment gateway through which credit card
orders are automatically authorized and charged. Such a program
processes the order and deposits the money directly into your account. These programs can utilize your existing merchant accounts,
or can come with merchant accounts
of their own.
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You
can also take checks and "cybercash" over your Web site. Content and
Design can help set these services up for you.
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- Fulfillment
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Rapid
product delivery is one of the most important
components of a successful direct marketing operation, whether online or
offline. Amazon.com built its entire business around the
"customer-obsession" model of consistently delivering more
value, more quickly than the customer expects.
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This
stands in contrast to the "4 to 6 weeks for delivery,"
unconcerned direct marketing model of the past. Today's marketplace has
expectations of receiving online orders within days, not weeks, so you
must do whatever it takes to deliver...or prepare to be outmaneuvered by
your competitors.
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We
at Content and Design have high-level product fulfillment experience. We
can help you design and automate your fulfillment operations, and even
connect them to your Web site, so customers can check order status.
That'll both give you high customer service marks, and cut down on phone
calls that cost time and money to answer.
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- Campaign Analysis
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Every
direct marketing effort should come full-circle, to determine
response and profitability.
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Response
analysis determines what percentage of the people reached with your
message responded. Profitability takes into account the cost of mounting
the campaign, the cost of delivering the goods ordered, and any
associated overhead...versus the income from the campaign.
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Both
response and profitability can be broken down into their component
parts for analysis at whatever level of detail continues providing
actionable information. Data from these analyses are used to adjust the
campaign, to maximize response and profitability. This analysis-corrective-action loop continues
for as long as the campaign is in operation.
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We
at Content and Design have analyzed hundreds of direct marketing
campaigns. We can help with yours.
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