Vouchers… Your Secret Weapon?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

The black cloud may have lifted, but there’s a long way to go before the economic balance is restored. So, it’s no surprise that some companies are using vouchers and special offers to entice customers to their website or venue.

Popular websites such as Moneysavingexpert.com, Vouchercodes.co.uk, and the many others floating around in cyber space, seem to have bred over the last few years. Nowadays, it’s the norm to choose which restaurant you go to based on the vouchers available. There is almost a guilt attached to paying full price for anything when there are so many offers on the market all ready for the taking. However, whilst bagging a bargain is great for the consumer, how great is it for your business?

Vouchers, discounts, special offers – they all have the power to increase foot fall and bring a new range of clientele to your books. There is an opportunity for businesses, by offering savings, to reach consumers who wouldn’t normally have access to their products or services – bringing longer term benefits in addition to short term profits. The trial may be all that a consumer needs to be persuaded that the quality of what they receive, or their enjoyment of it, is worthy of the higher price tag. In this instance, the consumer may continue to buy from the company even when the offer has expired.

Research recently undertaken by online agency fast.MAP on behalf of Promotional Marketing magazine supports this idea, showing how discounts can entice people over from competitors’ brands. A whopping 76% of the people asked, said that they’d try an alternative to their usual brand if they were given a coupon of 40p or more on a purchase of £2. 28% of these went on to say that after being tempted to use another brand they have remained loyal to this brand because they preferred it.

It is common sense to take heed of the population’s financial situation and respond to it. After all, Pizza Express has been running a two for one offer throughout the recession and it seems to have been a great success. However, it is important to acknowledge the possible consequences of such long term offers. What happens when they finally come to an end? Will the regular customers continue to eat at full price, or will they simply drift away? After all, who wants to pay full price for something you’ve been having for half price for over two years?

There is a real risk of devaluing your product/service if you aren’t careful with your use of offers. Will reaching new clientele be at the expense of losing your existing one? What if people become immune to your offer, do you then reduce it further? It takes a careful balancing act to reap the benefits of your offer, without paying the price.

We’re told that the best things in life are free. That’s all well and good for the consumer, but not so much for the struggling business owner who needs to make a profit. The key to maintaining the value of your product is to ensure that any discount you give is earned. If your customers don’t have to do anything to get their voucher, they won’t value it. Whether it’s asking them to subscribe to your newsletter, or giving discounts to people who spend over a certain amount of money, there are ways to make sure you protect your brand’s reputation.

Don’t overlook the positives of using offers and vouchers to draw customers in. A coherent strategy needs to be put in place to monitor their effectiveness and long term consequences, but that doesn’t undermine their potential in the work place. Research commissioned by Valassis, a leading coupon service provider, at the end of 2009, shows that there has been a 28% increase in the number of consumers looking for a promotional offer in the last twelve months alone.

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Business Lists, Consumer Lists, Email-Marketing, Mailing Lists, Uncategorized

Marketing Lessons from a Toddler

Monday, June 7th, 2010

I recently read a news story about a two year old girl who had caught a 20lb fish with her Barbie fishing rod. Amidst a whole hoard of professional fishermen and expensive equipment, the toddler with her toy rod and worm for bait, reeled in the catch of the weekend – a 30 inch Muskie. I’d like to bet that nobody had marked her out as competition or considered a Barbie rod a vital piece of equipment, and yet the result was clear. A perfect example as to why you should always keep an open mind.

Whilst logic can be relied on to determine many things, there are some things that will ultimately defy it – and never more so than with human behaviour. Analysing facts and figures can help to some extent, but ultimately there is no way to know what somebody is going to do or how somebody is going to respond without testing. It’s a crucial lesson to learn regarding your company’s marketing.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to marketing. There are a million tasks to do every day and it can be difficult to find time to overhaul your current marketing strategy – particularly when it is working fine. However, why should we be content with ‘fine’, when with a little bit of time and effort that ‘fine’ could be turned into ‘remarkable’?

As technology advances and your customers change, it’s crucial to ensure that your marketing is still relevant. If you’ve never branched out to email marketing, how do you know that it won’t make a positive impact on your sales? Without ever experimenting with different direct mail inserts, or promoting your products through SMS, how can you be sure that it won’t produce better response rates? Keeping an open mind about potential marketing opportunities is vital if you want your company to continue to progress. After all, you never know what might happen. Perhaps you’ll make a great catch too.

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Business Lists, Consumer Lists, Email-Marketing, Mailing Lists, Uncategorized

The Pitfalls of Thinking Email Marketing is Simply Digital Direct Mail

Monday, March 29th, 2010

So you want to target a select market with a specific offer in order to incite a set response – surely the same rules apply no matter what your channel of communication?

Yes, I know many of you long time email marketers are probably jumping up and down right now, asking, ‘How can you be serious?’ But, many people are still approaching email marketing in the same way as they approached their direct mail campaigns.

Naturally, there are certain principles that remain the same (e.g. careful targeting, personalisation, calls to action), but there are many differences too. These need to be identified and responded to if you are to fulfil the true potential of your e-marketing campaign.

So, let’s start from the top…

Getting your emails delivered. Direct mail, or ‘snail mail’ as it is often referred to, may take a day or two to get there, but most of the time (forgetting about all the postal strikes last year) your mail is delivered. Unfortunately, there’s a little more skill involved with getting your emails delivered.

Due to the increase of spam filters, the content of your emails and how you send them has a huge impact on whether or not they arrive in your recipients’ inboxes. Trying to send mass emails out using your regular Outlook account, particularly if you’re using the CC field for the names of your recipients, can cause you delivery problems. As can sending your campaign from a server with a reputation for spamming. Using spam-like words such as ‘Free’ or writing subject lines in capitals with one too many exclamation marks, all can affect the number of emails that pass through the filters. Not forgetting the heavy rate of bounce backs and changed addresses, which are often changed more regularly than residencies. It can seem a bit of a minefield if you don’t know, and adhere to, the basic rules of email marketing.

On the up side, emails are delivered almost instantaneously; much more useful for last minute offers and breaking news than the old snail mail.

Another point to remember is that emails are much easier to unsubscribe to than direct mail. Recipients are only one click away from opting out of your updates/offers/newsletter. So, it’s more important than ever to make sure that what you send out is relevant to your target group. At first glance it may seem that this is a huge disadvantage of email marketing, but if people are opting out it is highlighting that there is something wrong with either your targeting, or your email content. Identifying a problem and rectifying it could actually help you to reach a higher response rate in the long run.

Along the same point, bombarding your customers/prospects with direct mail isn’t perhaps the most effective method, but it causes significantly less damage than bombarding people with emails. Not only will you cause people to opt out (we have just identified how easy that is), but if continuous emails are sent to large groups of the same people, there’s a chance you will be branded a spammer and your emails won’t get delivered, or worse, your account suspended.

Designing emails as against direct mail, has both its benefits and its downfalls. On a positive note, emails can be a lot easier to design, even if you don’t understand html. If like many e-marketers you use a professional e-marketing system, chances are that you will have free access to some email templates. These can be customised simply by changing colours, inserting your own text and uploading your own images, and takes minimal time and effort. Particularly cost effective when you think about the paper and printing costs of a direct mail campaign.

However, unlike a direct mail design, what you see when you design the email isn’t necessarily what will confront your receivers. If you’re designing an email campaign you need to be aware of how your email will look in different email service providers – the best method of this is through testing. It is also necessary to be aware that some of your recipients may view your email through a preview pane. Again, it is crucial that you design with this in mind.

If you think it’s looking like email marketing is more effort than it’s worth, you couldn’t be further from the truth. If you are aware of how email marketing works and abide by the guidelines, there are many benefits to be had that you won’t get using direct mail.

1. For one, emails are generally much more cost effective, and arguably, often provide greater ROI [return on investment]. Perhaps one reason for this is that email makes it easier for your recipients to respond to your campaign, they’re only one click away from your landing page/website and replying to an email only takes a few seconds.
2. You don’t have to wait weeks, or even days, to find out how well your campaign performed. Email campaigns can be tracked immediately and results analysed from as early as 24hours. It also makes it easy to do split testing, giving you instant feedback and helping you to inform your future campaign successes.
3. There is a lot of information that you can find about your email campaigns. No longer do marketers have to wonder where their budget has been spent, you can track it religiously. Open rates, click through rates, number of web page visits, they all can tell something about your customers’ behaviour and what does and doesn’t work for them.

As with most things in this life, there are pros and cons to most things, and so a varied diet will usually bring about the best results. Direct mail and email marketing can happily work together as part of your marketing mix. Identify the benefits of each, apply them wisely, and sit back and wait for the results to come in.

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Business Lists, Consumer Lists, Email-Marketing, Mailing Lists, Uncategorized

Time to Reap the Rewards from Your Marketing

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Why follow ups are so important…

Over recent years, society has become obsessed with getting immediate results. Most of us demand it as a basic right, expecting to get anything we want, whenever we want it. In many ways, this expectation has helped us to create a faster, more efficient society which can provide for such demands. However, not everything can be delivered here and now – some results take time. This is especially true of marketing. So many companies sabotage their marketing through impatience. If a campaign doesn’t produce results instantaneously, we write it off. Unfortunately, this is the way to a whole heap of failed campaigns.

Not once, not twice, but three times; this is the average number of times a prospect will be contacted before they respond. Selling takes time, as does building up an awareness of your brand. If your company name isn’t readily familiar to your potential customers, expect it to take a while for you to develop a relationship between you and them.

Following up your initial mailing with another letter, an email, or even a phone call, can significantly increase the response rate of your marketing. Some companies have seen between a 25% to 50% improvement on their initial response. Why – because even those who intended to respond initially have probably forgotten. Contacting your prospects again and reinforcing your message, along with a strong call to action, helps your message to stand out amongst the zillions of others and gives people another chance to reply.

So, next time you’re doing your marketing plan, make sure that you factor in follow ups. It’s all about keeping up a consistent contact with your market (without bombarding them), and reminding them about who you are, where they can contact you, and what you can do to help.

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Business Lists, Consumer Lists, Email-Marketing, Mailing Lists, Uncategorized

Are you taking advantage of Christmas this year?

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

December’s only just started and already Christmas is in full swing. Shops are playing Silent Night on repeat, six foot inflatable Rudolph’s are standing in front gardens and the Christmas crowds are already forming a six mile tail back on the M1 – you’d be forgiven for wishing that Christmas was over.

Of course, that would mean waving goodbye to all of the business opportunities that the festive season brings.

Show Your Customers That You Care
…after all, isn’t Christmas all about spreading love and festive cheer? It can be as simple as sending a Christmas card – anything to show your customers that you value them.

It’s not often that people are given something without being expected to do something in return. Most of the time that you contact your customers you want something – a phone call to remind them that you need payment; a letter promoting your newest product range and asking them to buy; a quick email to remind them to act fast because your sale ends soon. But a Christmas card doesn’t require them to do anything. Yes, you hope that it will show them that you care. Yes, you hope that it will earn you some brownie points. Importantly though, none of that takes any effort from their side.

And, if that still hasn’t convinced you to send out company Christmas cards, consider the advertising opportunity. Think how much it would cost to buy a few centimetres of advertising space in the middle of your customers’ desk. And not just on one of your customer’s desk, but hundreds of them, thousands even. Get your Christmas cards out and you could have your company name sat right in front of your customers from now through to the New Year. That kind of advertising is invaluable.

Consider Going Green
Alternatively, why not send out e-cards? It may not offer the same advertising opportunity, but it costs a lot less. Forget the expensive print work, the cost of materials and the price of postage, sending an e-card is an inexpensive way to show your customers that you value them. And, as people become increasingly concerned about the wellbeing of the planet, being eco-friendly can create a welcome impression whilst helping your company do its bit for the world.

The Value of Novelty
The holidays are all about giving, so why stop at Christmas cards? There are certain benefits to be found in giving personalised novelty gifts to your customers. What about a Christmas bauble, complete with your company name across the front in glitter? It might seem slightly tacky but then again, tacky isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to Christmas decor. Besides, having an ongoing presence on the Christmas tree throughout the holidays takes some beating.

Alternatively, what about a wind up Santa? A Christmas stocking? Or perhaps some individually wrapped Christmas puddings? Just make sure that whatever you send, you personalise it with your company’s name.

Receiving a gift, however small, makes people feel good. Getting people to associate your company with the feel good factor is something which will benefit you for a long time to come.

Give a Helping Hand
Most people are on a mad spending spree over Christmas, despite setting a budget that they swore they would stick to. So, any special offers or vouchers are always welcomed with open arms. Reward your customers for their loyalty with a bit of help when they need it and you’ll not only increase sales now, but your customers will remember your generosity in the future too.

Be Clear
Remember, if you are going to repeatedly contact your customers with special offers and advice over the holiday season, it may be in your interest to warn them. Tell people what they can expect from you. Too much unexpected contact can make your customers opt out of your newsletter/offers, particularly if they think that you’re taking on a new aggressive approach to your marketing. Explaining to customers that you will be contacting them with exclusive offers at regular intervals over the Christmas period will help to prepare them and hopefully reassure them that you won’t be bombarding them forever.

Remember, whatever type of marketing you do this Christmas, make it count!

Happy Holidays from all of us at Whichlist.com!

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Business Lists, Consumer Lists, Email-Marketing, Mailing Lists, Uncategorized