eMarketing Innovation in Pittsburgh PA

There is a tendency in email marketing to obsess about the bad.  Some people look right past opens and click-throughs to the unsubscribe rate.  If they see 10 people unsubscribed they begin to panic thinking that the campaign has lost its effectiveness and it’s time to move in radically different directions.  Always have an idea of what the numbers mean.  10 people from a list of 10,000 means that only .1% unsubscribed.  That’s not something to obsess over.  However 10 from a list of 100, is something to be concerned about.

Avoid the unsubscribe paranoia.  Certainly you should gauge how many unsubscribes and what is unreasonable.  Know what the numbers mean and whether it signifies a problem needs fixed or does the entire campaign need changed.  As a rule of thumb anything over 5% is probably pointing to a major problem.  However, if its 3% but that only happens once, it’s worth evaluating that email, but not pulling the plug on the campaign.  Smaller lists require even more analysis.  Three people from one company makes up 3% if you only email a hundred people but it is really an isolated incident.  Before analyzing any email rate set your goals and acceptable ranges of response.  Do the same for unsubscribes and avoid rushing to judgement that things have gone terribly wrong unless you have some significant data to back that opinion.

The final reason that Direct Mail can be a nice supplement to email marketing is that they lend themselves to separate next steps.  For example, email is great for linking back to your website or a landing page.  That is a little more difficult to do through direct mail as the recipient has to type in the whole address.  Printed material often suffers from email as some people don’t want the extra step of printing.

The point is that you’ll have two options to choose from in deciding what best supports the next step you want recipients to take.  If you limit yourself to just doing email you might be trying to force a circle into a square hole.

Many studies have been done regarding how many times you need to communicate, or touch, prospects before they take action.  In direct mail and email the median number typically comes out between 6 – 10.  That can be a lot of times to interact with prospects without a plan.

Including direct mail with your email allows for a more diverse plan and decreases the risk of prospects tuning out your message.  If a direct mail campaign is abandoned, then everything begins to ride on email.  If the email touches stop, everything stops, and with that ends the opportunity to turn the prospect into a lead or customer.

There can certainly be too much of a good thing in online marketing.  Even the best email campaign can suffer from fatigue if its provided so often to the audience that they tune it out.  Sometimes the most engaged subscriber will only pay attention to a portion of your message.  Direct mail can apply that extra touch in a new way.  Rather than beating the campaign into the audience, it provides a subtle punch.  For those times when you have an event, product, or service that you want to give a quick boost, direct mail to email subscribers can be an unexpected and fresh way to present that item. 

In this case direct mail is the trick up your sleeve that lets you get an extra message to your prospects or clients without badgering them with the same old thing.

This is an aspect that my example did successfully.  They made me proactively opt-in to get email rather than direct mail, however, many people don’t.  In the fervor to cut marketing costs some companies have switched all communications over to email, no exceptions.  I’ll ignore the obvious problem of that not being an opt-in list and go for the subtle one, who said the audience preferred email?

Sometimes email just isn’t right.  I sign up for many email communications but in some cases I prefer direct mail.  An example, my weekly circular ads, sure I can go online and virtually shuffle through sale ads but I like physically having it.  I don’t know why, I just do.  That is the case for many companies, coupons being a notable case.  Some people love getting paper coupons, cutting them out, and filing them away.  Somehow the effect is lost when they have to print them and then cut them out.  For some reason the extra step is perceived as a major inconvenience even if the coupons are easier to find.

The other problem with pulling the rug out on the direct mail recipients is that there are still computer illiterates and functionally illiterate.  Obviously this demographic depends on what the company offers.  Software vendors probably don’t have this problem but many companies do, especially product and service companies that sell to the general public.  Keeping direct mail alive with email campaigns allow companies to keep in touch with their clients that prefer, or need, the paper.