Direct Marketing
2006-02-25 23:09 GMT
There are two ways of doing direct marketing. First and more traditional one is just to do it. Shoot your letters, e-mails and other crap you feel like delivering to whomever might get your message. Problems with this approach are almost so obvious it is questionable, if they should even be listed here. Messages might reach the right audience, but without any meaning to them. Those messages also get lost in masses of others attempts to get attention of the customers.Other way to do direct marketing is much more rational. It is rational because direct marketing as a concept is quite cheap and generates attention. But getting it really cost-effective is a trick where you'll have to find ways of getting your message to the targeted audience. Without doing this it is likely that your campaign won't generate as much pull as it could.
When you target your campaign, you should think who do you want to reach, what are their interests and what you can offer to fill their needs. Most obvious group to market directly are clients you already have. If they have bought once, it is only common sense to support their choice by delivering stories about successes by other customers and stories about the development you are doing to help them succeed in their own story.
In targeting your campaign you need tools. Probably the most important is the register. In register you have all the information you can get. Problem with a register is the fast corruption of information. People move, change e-mail addresses, change jobs, retire or die. With current tools in most of the offices doing direct marketing this leads to endless loop of sending mail to places and addresses not in existence anymore. This is inevitable.
What is not inevitable is the handwork of fixing those registers one by one switching between one's e-mail and spreadsheet. This is an area where it is easy to change lives in offices little bit more bearable.
I am getting fucking amazed, how nobody haven't done it already.
I am also pretty convinced, that we're going to do it.
Joe