Direct, E-Mail & Social Media Marketing

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter F. Drucker

In today’s world of dynamic and rapidly evolving technologies, communication has become ‘smarter’ and far more pervasive in our daily life. Two exceptional examples are the explosive, electronic marvels known as social media and mobile marketing. These are two of the newest sales strategies to be added to our e-Commerce vocabulary, both of which are beginning to take the global business world by storm.

Exciting and novel marketing advances aside, at SalesFish, the ‘song remains the same’, which means the Golden Rules of advertising, essentially, haven’t changed. The basics: Have you correctly identified and analyzed your target market? What products or services do they need? Now that you’ve researched the communication preferences of your consumer base, do you know the most effective way to reach them? When you do make contact, will your message contain ‘highly useful’ information? If all of this sounds overly complicated, it isn’t, but our last question is key: it is essential to always say ‘No’ to any marketing efforts that can distract your target audience from the critically important ‘relevance’ of your message.

Most marketers today are trying to achieve the ideal and ultimate, ‘one-to-one marketing’ result by using the maximum number of touch points possible. The question then becomes: What does a multi-channel/one-to-one marketing campaign look like, and how do all the many pieces of this e-Commerce puzzle fit together?

Simply stated, a multi-channel /one-to-one marketing campaign utilizes two or more ways to communicate with a specific customer within the same campaign. A typical marketing approach would be to use some or all of the various applications of direct mail, e-mail, mobile, and social media to build an effective, high ROI, advertising campaign.

Success with multi-channel/one-to-one marketing is best achieved by facilitating an ongoing and truly relevant conversation with a customer. Compare a multi-channel/one-to-one campaign to a more traditional marketing strategy and the advantages of the former approach immediately become clear. How can you engage in an interactive conversation with a television commercial, radio ad, or direct mail delivery? Such a dialogue isn’t possible without a convenient, additional channel that allows a customer to respond. This dynamic ‘interconnectivity’ between a buyer and seller is an obvious benefit of using a multi-channel/one-to-one campaign.

While you now understand the importance of a ‘two-way’ conversation with your market base, you may have many questions as to how you can best achieve it. There’s a lot to know, but below are a few basics to keep in mind.

  1. First and foremost, always answer the question: What do I know in total about my customers or potential customers? Your existing database will contain the information needed to answer this question – data that will also serve as the foundation for all your multi-channel marketing efforts. If you haven’t been ‘super diligent’ about data collection in the past – don’t panic! SalesFish can take full advantage of any data available by thoroughly organizing and analyzing the information in a way that transforms it into an exceptionally useful marketing tool.
  2. Secondly, make a decision as to the specific elements you want to include in your multi-channel /one-to-one campaign. The key here is effective component integration – combining marketing strategies in a synergistic way that greatly enhances the impact of your message. Again, does all this sound extremely complex and difficult to achieve? As we said, it isn’t – not if you know the ‘just right’ formula for the optimal and seamless integration of multimedia marketing campaigns. The industry-leading e-Commerce experts at SalesFish will show you exactly how individual components work together in an overall marketing strategy that combines direct mail, e-mail, social media, search engine optimization, pay per click, and mobile marketing.

Today’s direct mail and e-mail can be personalized with an unlimited amount of information. Some forms of personalization – using a customer’s name – will be obvious while other elements will be less so. For example:

  • The use of images that relate specifically to the age, gender, income, education, and ethnicity of the customer
  • Personalizing copy and special offers based on past purchases – your message should strive for proven relevance to a customer’s life.
  • Encouraging the customer to respond to your offer by using a personalized URL, scanning a quick response code with their mobile phone, joining your social networks and/or opting in to a mobile club.

It’s easy to recognize the very real value of response channels that allow you to track customer activities while collecting more data. Once a buyer/seller conversation has been started, a wide variety of information may be retrieved. Survey responses, e-mail addresses, mobile phone numbers and more can all be added to your consumer database – invaluable profile information that allows you to establish an even more relevant dialogue with an individual customer.

When compared to direct mail, e-mail marketing offers far more opportunities to increase your demographic database and level of message personalization. E-mail marketing offers the added advantages of real-time performance analysis by telling you who received the e-mail, who opened it, and what portions of the content were reviewed.

It’s a win-win marketing scenario: fast, easy, and data-rich electronic communications – your existing customer or potential buyer is already sitting at his or her computer or connected to the Web via a mobile device. This means a consumer can respond with maximum speed and convenience while your ‘always relevant’ message is still fresh in their mind.

We hope you have benefited from our brief overview of data gathering and analysis, as well as our suggestions on how to achieve a highly productive, interactive conversation with members of your market base. We would also like you to know that, using unique campaigns, you can easily use social media and/or your website to have increasingly personalized conversations with customers and prospects. With the widespread availability of detailed, individual profile information that can be obtained from social media sources, you can create an exceptionally individualized message. One example: you wish to advertise to females who are age 24 to 29, live within a 10 mile radius of your location, earn over $75,000 per year, and are a fan of your top three competitors.

Using available or SalesFish enhanced data, you can quickly and effectively integrate your message directly into a consumer’s social networking activities by sending them a highly personalized Instant Message (as one example). The next and all-important step is to direct your new contact to the appropriate landing pages of your website, and when your instructions are followed, you will have access to even more data that can lead to a profitable and long-term buyer/seller relationship.

If you think what has been outlined here is overly cumbersome to employ and/or beyond your financial reach – think again. At SalesFish, we make all forms of e-Commerce easy to understand, and best of all, truly affordable. We have the fundamental tools and Web marketing experience needed to provide you with the seamless integration of multiple response channels, as well as the ability to monitor specific conversations while charting their success – all from one convenient location.

Make ‘today’ the day you decide to take full advantage of our multi-channel/one-to-one marketing expertise, state of the art technologies, and high ROI-based advertising campaigns that are among the most innovative in the industry. Improve your Internet or direct mail marketing performance by calling today for your ‘no-cost or obligation’, strategic, multi-channel/one-to-one marketing assessment.

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