Email and Direct Mail: 10 Thoughts For Success
Takeaway notes from a Target Marketing webinar, by Aliza Bornstein, copywriter, Melissa Data

In a Target Marketing webinar on April 30, Reggie Brady, president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, showed marketers the ten steps listed below for maximum email and direct mail success!

Did you know that email-only response accounts for less than one percent? Catalog-only response accounts for 8.3 percent. But email plus catalog response accounts for 11.2 percent. So what’s the point? Extend the power of your messaging!

1. Send email in advance of direct mail
To cut through customer mailbox clutter, send an email two to three days before your direct mail piece arrives. In the email, show your outer envelope and/or catalog cover. Be sure to prominently feature your URL on every spread of mailing component.

2. Use USPS® delivery tracking and then send an email
Why is tracking important? You can determine exactly when a customer receives your mail piece. For accurate measurement set up separate SKU’s for online and offline. The email will extend the life of the direct mail piece the customer just received from you—and keep your brand name in the top of their mind.

3. On a budget? Send a postcard
With the May 11 price increase, direct mail seems most undesirable. Many want to avoid direct mail to avoid the pinch in their wallets. But direct mail actually helps your email efforts. Use a postcard (the cheapest form of direct mail) to drive recipients to your Web site and supplement messaging to your email list.

4. Use a PURL call-to-action
Personalized URL’s pull double branding duty—they can be used in both direct mail and email. PURL’s can take recipients directly to a pre-populated landing page for easy ordering.

5. Use email for pre-testing
Marketers can incorporate different creative approaches into email to pre-test imagery and positioning. They can test offers at specific times with wording and graphics to see what yields the highest response rates. Once pre-testing is completed, direct mail can be sent out with the email offer that performed at the highest capacity.

6. Leverage the channel
There are advantages and disadvantages to direct mail and email. Direct mail has longer form copy, but multiple images. Email has fewer images, but shorter, succinct copy—a proven attention-getter for people who respond to visual images. Also, email can have strong calls-to-action, both above and below the fold.

7. Do a matchback analysis
To view the data across channels, do a matchback analysis 45 to 90 days after a catalog or direct mail drop. Develop a standard process with standard rules so that you can compare campaigns over time and recognize trends.

• Match on keycode first regardless of name or address
• Match on name or address
• Match on address

Create “holdout groups” (for both email and direct mail) and measure sales impact.

8. Maximize your call center
Train your call center reps to ask for email addresses. This is a newer tend that marketers are seeing as an important operating metric by measuring call centers on the number of valid email addresses collected.

A customer-initiated call is the perfect opportunity to ask for an email address. You can script a value proposition for your call reps to use. Begin the communication ASAP with a welcome email, and consider flagging bounced emails in workstations.

9. Email Appending
Append databases include postal addresses and email addresses. They’re also great for re-contacting email bounces. Make sure your data sources are opt-in names and match them at an individual level (7-30 percent), not a household level. Provide ways for customers to opt-out and flag those in your file as “do not email.” You only have to pay for deliverable names.

10. After you append
Don’t simply put the names into your regular communications cycle. They may not have read the “permission pass” email or are not familiar with your email style and frequency. For the first two or three communications create tailored emails for the new names.

---Source: Target Marketing April 30, 2009 webinar (www.targetingmarketingmag.com/webinar). Reggie Brady is the president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions. She can be reached at reggie@reggiebrady.com.