The first reason that doing both direct mail and email is that one can, and should, support the other.  In the example of the postcard I got, I took note of the email option and acted on it.  Instead of making me choose email over direct mail, suppose the trend of acting online from the direct mail continued.  Future postcards could draw my attention to email only offers, online store offers, company announcements, releases, newsletters, etc.

The point is that part of marketing is how many times you meaningfully touch your target audience.  Doing email and direct mail allow for varied media that has the potential to resonate better with the prospect.  So if you have a few avenues to approach them, you increase your odds of them taking the next step.

I recently received a postcard promotion from my favorite bookstore with discount coupons. Just as I’m sure their marketing department was hoping, I filed the coupons away and was sure to visit the week they were valid (and did). The postcard also encouraged me to sign up for email messages. Of course believing in email promotion like I do, I was surprised I hadn’t already opted for that and quickly visited their website to correct that oversight. As I was signing up for their email promotions, it dawned on me that they were asking me to replace postcards with emails, not supplement what I was receiving. I ended up finishing the form to get the messages via email but was left thinking, what a wasted opportunity. Often times clients are in a hurry to replace their direct mailings with email. While I certainly see and advocate the cost efficiency and effectiveness of email, why stop doing a marketing activity if it is working?

In my coming posts I will lay out 7 reasons why direct mail and email can and should complement one another and how even when email carries a bulk of the marketing, direct mail is a valuable supplement.

Innovation can take on a lot of meanings.  In the tech community it usually means the cutting edge, the newest thing.  When it comes to marketing online the cutting edge can be a great tool.  It can also be a quagmire that will halt your process because instead of creating and delivering a marketing campaign, energy is focused on revising everything to be state of the art. 

As an example people often want to begin email marketing by dissecting how many different groups they believe are necessary to make a customized message.  Segmentation is a valuable thing at the right point in the process but if someone only has 100 people to send to, making 10 categories and 10 customized topics probably isn’t worth the effort.  At that point, time is probably better spent picking up the phone and talking to each person.  Instead of trying to customize a newsletter, start one.  Its OK to start with a general topic because the group is so small it can serve as a sample audience.  As the list grows and you begin to measure what there is an audience for and what is tracking the best results, segmentation is a natural extension.  Segmenting small lists before getting started will make doing your email campaigns exponentially harder, resulting in more effort and/or more money.  The metrics won’t add up and soon the email campaign will be abandoned, a victim of trying to do too much too soon.  Take stock of what step in the process you are on, overcomplicating your campaigns will only cause frustration and overexertion.

– Eric
www.emarketinginnovation.com