5 Roles Making Waves in Direct Marketing

The evolution of direct marketing over the past several years has led to an emergence of new roles and new expectations for current ones. “Marketers have never had to know so much,” says Jerry Bernhart, founder of Bernhart Associates Executive Search, which specializes in marketing, e-commerce, and CRM. “There are just so many moving pieces to modern marketing. You need someone who is data savvy [and] analytic; someone who has a proven track record of growing a business; someone who's a financial steward; and someone who's a marketing technologist. It's the land of a thousand niches.”

Direct Mail Has a Greater Effect on Purchase Than Digital Ads

An in-depth neuroscientific study sponsored by the Postal Service Inspector General's office (OIG) found direct mail ads to be superior to those viewed online in eight out of nine categories. Digital ads seized the attention of consumers quicker, but physical ads held that attention longer, elicited a greater emotional reaction, and played a more direct role in ultimate purchase decisions.

12 Steps to an Effective Direct Mail Campaign

Direct mail campaigns still remain a key tool in the overall marketing plans of many businesses. When planned, executed and refined correctly, they can be a very effective way of gaining visibility with tangible and measurable results.

Here are 12 strategies for optimizing your efforts:

Is Direct Mail Dying? 3 Effects on Marketing

Multi-channel marketers have been debating the lifespan of direct mail ever since the United States Postal Service revealed an accelerated drop in mail volume back in the early days of the recession. The debate is more relevant than it’s ever been today as cheaper, more efficient options spring up seemingly overnight.

10 best practices for direct mail

Direct mail should be considered an essential part of an integrated marketing strategy. It delivers the high level of personalization today’s customers demand, it provides proven response triggers that drive the target into action and it’s the right media to tell an information-rich story in a compelling way.To understand the full potential of direct mail, here is a list of 10 direct mail best practices that Jacobs & Clevenger employs to optimize the effectiveness of our clients’ direct marketing campaigns.

Email and Direct Mail Are Not on Opposing Teams

A common challenge for CMO’s is getting their email marketers to acknowledge that there still is a direct mail group alive and well within their company. 

Meanwhile, according to the DMA, many marketers are reporting a dramatically higher response rate to direct mail than they did in the 1980’s. Yet, direct mail is not perfect: it is not instantaneous on either delivery or feedback, it requires multiple steps to execute, and if used unwisely (last week’s blog) it can be expensive. 

How to: Be Successful with Direct Marketing

I don’t care what they say, print marketing is not dead. It is easy to get carried away with the instant gratification of Facebook, the tracking abilities of e-mail marketing, or the ease of a blog post, but there is still something to be said about direct mail. For as many millennials there are monopolizing marketers’ attention, there is also a huge population of the public who do not participate in social media or check their email 60 times a day… people who value a tangible print piece. There is always room to subsidize your digital marketing efforts with good ol’ fashioned print, and here are some key points to keep in mind and implement for the most effective print piece possible.

Direct Mail Goes Digital

Direct Mail has been inseparable from technology since the days of the earliest database-driven campaigns. The marketing mix has changed dramatically since then, with an explosion of digital channels—but direct mail remains one of the most effective hands-on tools to reach customers and spur prompt action. “When you want someone to attend an event, make a phone call, or do anything with higher touch, you still see people go back to physical mail,” says Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Even in the Digital Age, Why Direct Mail Is Still a Viable Marketing Tactic

We’ve always known that Canada produces delicious food, from maple syrup to poutine, and hilarious comedians, from John Candy to Mike Myers. Now, our friends to the north have made another important contribution, this time to the world of modern marketing.