Online Media Daily recently ran an article titled “Direct Mail Doomed, Long Live Email,” predicting the death of direct mail at the merciless hands of the Internet.  Citing a new report from research firm Borrell Associates, the article noted that spending on direct mail is expected to decline 39% over the next five years, which would dethrone it as the top placeholder for ad revenue, dropping it to fourth behind Web, broadcast TV and newspapers.  The decline, which has already begun, is being blamed on the worsening economics for printing, the never-ending increase in postage costs, and the improving economics and popularity of the Internet.  Borrell predicts email marketing will fill the voice left by direct mail.

At The EGC Group, we’re not so sure about this theory.  After all—not too long ago the premature demise of newspaper as an entire medium was predicted.  In response, many newspapers have risen to this challenge and started changing the ways they do business, finding new ways to make newspapers relevant again.  We believe the same will happen for direct mail.

Yes, many businesses that have used direct mail with success in the past will and should shift those dollars to email marketing to achieve cost savings.  But in some instances, direct mail will still be the more appropriate, impactful choice, and will be something EGC will continue to recommend to our clients. 

EGC runs successful Customer Relationship Management programs for a number of clients.  The intent of these programs is to keep in touch with past customers, through direct mail and email, keeping them engaged with the client’s brand and providing incentive-based reasons for them to remain a loyal and frequent customer.  One program run for Site for Sore Eyes, an EGC client with 38 locations located in Northern California, calls for a Thank You letter with a $25 gift card for use on a future purchase, signed by the store owner, to be mailed to all customers within a month of their shopping experience.  While this could be done in an email, we at EGC believe the impact would be lost.  There is just something personal about getting a signed letter and a card you can tuck away in your wallet that is lost in an email.  The same holds true for another aspect of the program—cards sent to customers during their birthday month that deliver a special savings.  How impersonal would it be to get a birthday email, rather than a card?  And who wants to print out a savings certificate, cut it out, and carry that around, vs. a compact little gift card?

To keep direct mail alive, marketers and their advertising agencies need to be smarter about their use of the medium.  Dollars spent on large, untargeted mass mailings hoping to reach anyone need to shift to email, saving mail for customers that most deserve your investment—proven customers and highly targeted customers that have been identified as needing your product, and those using your competitors product.  At EGC we have several methods that we use to achieve this finite targeting, including use of PRIZM, a software that allows us to profile a brand’s customers based on a range of demographics, categorize them in one of 66 different classifications, and then find similar potential customers in other areas.  Using PRIZM, we’ve helped the New York Islanders find new season ticketholders, Brother International find new areas where dealers will most likely prosper and several colleges and universities identify their best prospects.  We’ve seen this strategy of uber-targeting work well for many clients in the past, and will continue to use it and refine it in the future.  While direct mail may never return to the volumes it once had, we don’t believe it’s dying—just growing more graceful with age.

We at EGC know just as well as anyone the importance of a strong CRM program to your business, especially in a weakened economy.  We’ve posted several blogs that cite research which shows that holding on to existing customers is easier and less costly than acquiring new ones.  A recent blog noted EGC’s top 10 recommendations for maximizing a marketing budget in 2009, with “retain your current customers and clients” nabbing the #2 spot in the list.

But as we and others preach the importance of having a well-engineered CRM program, there is one critical, seemingly obvious, element to a successful program that we may forget to mention:  Moderation.

Like the saying goes—Everything in moderation, and moderation in everything.  While a customer may feel a greater sense of loyalty to your brand when you make an effort to keep in touch with them, don’t overdo it. Give your customers a chance to react to your messages before hitting them with more.  Make sure your messages are relevant to your customer, and you aren’t just sending random communications in the hopes that something, anything, will entice them.

Just imagine, as a customer, providing a business with your email address after a pleasant shopping experience, only to be inundated every day for the next 8 days with emails attempting to cross-sell you on other products or offshoots of the brand.  And within all of these emails, imagine not getting even a single promotional offer for a discount on your next purchase or a “Thank you for your recent purchase” note.  Obnoxious, right?

While you may scoff at the example and ask “What marketer would do THAT?,” don’t.  I recently received these 8 emails—from a major national clothing retailer.  On day 11, when I received my 9^th email, I unsubscribed from their list, and likely as their customer.  It was clear that they weren’t interested as developing a relationship with me as a long-term customer, but instead, just wanted me to spend more on anything they could possibly interest me in.  They quickly turned from a brand I had a good experience with to a brand that annoyed me… and in just 11 days, they lost me and any future sales I might have given them.

Don’t make the same mistake!  Make your messages thoughtful, relevant, and most importantly—just infrequent enough to feel valuable and special.

Incredibly, the marriage of the old and new has finally happened. It may be the beginning of the end, even though I hope not. Trinity Church in NY is going to be using Twitter for the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. That’s right, tweets about the Stations of the Cross on the holiest of holy days in the Christian faith. Kind of crazy to think that the Pope is now on YouTube and Trinity Church is on Twitter! It goes to show you that everyone needs to connect with their customers in every way possible, even high powers. If you want to follow, check it out: http://twitter.com/twspassionplay

In this week’s Advertising Age http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=135438 Crispin Porter’s Creative Chief Alex Bogusky confirms what we at EGC have known for years, smaller advertising agencies deliver in ways that larger agencies can’t. So, why are so many small to mid size agencies succeeding in a climate of ad cutbacks? Many of the larger agencies are going through deep layoffs and client losses. Why not the mid-size agency? In this article, EGC has come up with some answers:

Why brands are turning to mid-size agencies:

- Marketing partner vs. advertising vendor: The cutbacks seen in advertising and media are seen in just that, advertising and media. People still need to sell things and more importantly, position themselves. Brands have come to rely on the firms that become their marketing partners rather than just media buying or production firms.

- City talent, Close to Home: In most mid-sized agencies you are getting the talent from the big agencies that either left for a better work/life balance or to get the opportunity to be more creative. In fact, Bob Costabile, EGC’s Creative Director, reigns from Y&R and Hill Holiday. Most of the employees at EGC have had some big agency experience in another life. So, brands are getting the same level of thought and creativity found from larger agencies, without the larger agency costs.

- Senior Management Supervision: At EGC, the senior management of the agency, including the agency principal, is involved in the daily activities on each account. Quite often, at larger agencies, a junior account staff is solely responsible for important decision about a brand’s direction. Navigating today’s economic climate is too important to be left to a less-seasoned planning staff.

- Can I have that yesterday?: A mid-sized agency is used to being more nimble and responsive, and can adapt to the changes that need to happen quickly in times like these. In larger agencies, they are just not equipped to turn new ideas around as quickly.

- Fresh Ideas: Mid sized agencies tend to be quicker to integrate and offer new marketing methods like viral video, social media, mobile media, word-of-mouth marketing and more. Why? They are used to working with clients that don’t have the “big media budgets” and are well versed in coming up with creative ideas beyond the traditional media buy.

In this week’s Advertising Age http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=135438 Crispin Porter’s Creative Chief Alex Bogusky confirms what we at EGC have known for years, smaller advertising agencies deliver in ways that larger advertising agencies can’t. So, why are so many small to mid size advertising agencies succeeding in a climate of ad cutbacks? Many of the larger advertising agencies are going through deep layoffs and client losses. Why not the mid-size advertising agency? In this article, EGC has come up with some answers:

Why brands are turning to mid-size advertising agencies:

- Marketing partner vs. advertising vendor: The cutbacks seen in advertising and media are seen in just that, advertising and media. People still need to sell things and more importantly, position themselves. Brands have come to rely on the firms that become their marketing partners rather than just media buying or production firms.

- City talent, Close to Home: In most mid-sized advertising agencies you are getting the talent from the big agencies that either left for a better work/life balance or to get the opportunity to be more creative. In fact, Bob Costabile, EGC’s Creative Director, reigns from Y&R and Hill Holiday. Most of the employees at EGC have had some big advertising agency experience in another life. So, brands are getting the same level of thought and creativity found from larger agencies, without the larger agency costs.

- Senior Management Supervision: At EGC, the senior management of the agency, including the agency principal, is involved in the daily activities on each account. Quite often, at larger advertising agencies, a junior account staff is solely responsible for important decision about a brand’s direction. Navigating today’s economic climate is too important to be left to a less-seasoned planning staff.

- Can I have that yesterday?: A mid-sized advertising agency is used to being more nimble and responsive, and can adapt to the changes that need to happen quickly in times like these. In larger agencies, they are just not equipped to turn new ideas around as quickly.

- Fresh Ideas: Mid sized advertising agencies tend to be quicker to integrate and offer new marketing methods like viral video, social media, mobile media, word-of-mouth marketing and more. Why? They are used to working with clients that don’t have the “big media budgets” and are well versed in coming up with creative ideas beyond the traditional media buy.

On Tuesday, February 24th, The EGC Group hosts its second in a series of marketing seminars: Rethink Your Marketing Plan: A Panel Discussion on Successful Tactics to Integrate Digital Media. Sponsored by The New York Times and Adecco, the event includes panelists from Google, NBC Universal, NY Times, Emerging Vision and The EGC Group. Stay tuned to this blog for post event coverage, and immediately after the event follow the conversation on the EGC forum located here: http://www.egcgroup.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2

If you ever wanted to find out what the general public thinks of your brand, in one word or less, visit Brand Tags. www.brandtags.net. The site, started in May 2008 by Noah Brier, allows people to give their first, one-word, reaction to a brand based on the logo displayed. The results of the public’s opinion are displayed in “tag cloud” format, which displays the most popular results in the largest size.

Some brands may not like the results. Chevrolet = old. Microsoft = monopoly. Capitol One = debt.

While it may not be a reveal of true brand perception, it is a fun play of word association.

Got my daily eMarketer email (which I refer to as my online marketing statistics daily bible) and something caught my eye. They had some facts from the PEW internet and American Life Project around the users of Social Networks for November & December of 2008, and as you would imagine, 75% of 18-24 year olds use social networks. However, if you look at people ages 65+, 7% are using social networks, which to me was surprising since I wouldn’t think the older and wiser demographic would have embraced social networking. Then you look further down and you see college graduates use social networking less than those with a high school diploma and some college. It’s pretty interesting to see the type of people who are using social networking, but remember you should look or have your advertising agency look at the demographics of each social network independently, because even though this is social networking, in general it doesn’t mean that the independent social networks break down this way.
 
And back to the eMarketer email and the second graph, “How important is search?” It appears search is pretty important considering that 81% of respondents used search to find information. Kind of begs the question, what are the other 19% doing?

Some of us here at the advertising agency can’t stop talking about The Snuggie. If you are one of the few who haven’t seen the direct response commercial, it’s an unusual blanket with sleeves that resembles a monastery outfit. Actually, someone here at EGC actually owns a “faux” Snuggie. (you know who you are.)

Ad Age reported this week (http://adage.com/article?article_id=134080) that while the TV spot has gotten a lot of laughs, the Snuggie has reported over 4 million sold in just three months. Plus, the product has become a viral marketing success without any outbound effort. There are over 200 videos on YouTube dedicated to the Snuggie and it has over 4,000 fans of Facebook.

So, what marketing best practices can be taken from the Snuggie advertising campaign? As Ad Age points out, the direct response style TV campaign focuses on simple product problem and solution. While the campaign may not win any creative awards, it does the right job of highlighting product features and uses. Also, we at EGC believe the TV spot was successful because of the product. While it may not be for everyone, it’s a comfort product priced right for a recession. And in today’s times, who doesn’t want to warm up in a snuggie?

As we enter the new year, many marketers are looking for ways to do more with less. EGC has compiled the Top 10 best practices that will make a marketing budget go further.

1. Reevaluate Your Brand and Value Proposition: Now is the time to reexamine your brand.  Are the promises your brand is making to prospective buyers what is being delivered? Before reviewing how to spend your marketing budget, it’s important to make sure that you are delivering the right message. An online study can help determine what your clients and customers see as your brand attributes, and why they prefer you over your competitors. Once you determine what your own customers think about your brand, you can better promote the real brand benefits that are most meaningful to other prospects.
    
2. Retain Your Current Customers and Clients: In today’s economic climate, your competitors are after your customers and looking to woo them with additional incentives and discounts. We at EGC are consistently referring to Forester’s research, which found “Businesses in many industries may lose up to 50% of their customers over a five-year period; those customers tend to be replaced by less tenured, less loyal customers.” Your customer communication program can be as simple as an e-newsletter to your customer database. Or it can be a more complex undertaking in which you segment customers behaviors and send out personalized mailings. Your clients and customers want to know that you care enough about them to stay in touch. In addition, you have the opportunity to use your customer database for new customers via referral programs. And perhaps best of all, programs like these are often extremely low cost. So, either simple or complex, be consistent with a customer communication program and you’ll see ROI in 2009.
    
3. Target: Now that you’ve reviewed your brand and put a program in place to retain existing customers it’s important to make sure that your marketing effort to new customers is focused. Are you really reaching the people most likely to buy your product or use your service? Fortunately, there there are a lot of targeting tools available today. Two of the favored techniques at The EGC Group are using direct customer research, and through a prospect-profiling technique that links your customer data with consumer demographics, syndicated survey data and survey research to reveal exactly which types of consumers are most likely to use your products. This is called PRIZM NE. For more on this topic, please refer to: http://www.egcgroup.com/blog/?p=72.
    
4. Negotiate, Negotiate, Negotiate: Media partners, printing vendors and other partners are all feeling the same economic crunch as you. Now is the time to work with them and negotiate for better positioning, better placement, and more for your advertising dollar. At EGC, our partners are exactly that, partners. They care about our clients’ business just as much as we do, so it’s in their best interest to offer the most added-value possible to make a client’s campaign successful.
    
5. Maximize Your Online Presence: In 2008 EGC saw an increase in the online spending of our clients’ advertising budgets, and overall the shifts in budgets met with successful results. We’ve seen enough ROI to continue to shift more budgets toward online media. Many marketers, as Tony Valado has cited in the November Interactive Insider, know the value of search marketing and continue to dedicate budgets toward this effort. However, there are many other online media opportunities available that can deliver optimum results. The banner ad, for example, has gotten a bad rap, but there are new ways to use online media: behavioral targeting, content targeting, and more.
    
6. Go Social (carefully): Social Media Networks like MySpace, Facebook, etc. became a hot point for marketers in 2008. Many marketers rushed to take part and included Social Media as part of their marketing budget, and not everyone saw returns from their efforts. The benefit of Social Networking sites is that it allows for true, honest, dialogue with the end user. However, this often becomes a forum for negative user feedback and can be hard to control. In addition, many Social Networking site users react adversely to the usual “mass advertising” on their turf. So how can you get more ROI from Social Networking sites in 2009? First, consider adjusting your social networking ad buy to be “hyper-targeted,” looking to reach those groups who are the best prospects for your message. Second, adjust your message so that is in line with the space…traditional messages don’t work here. Third, think outside the box and consider these sites as event forums and an avenue to test the nontraditional: conduct an online event, host an online contest, offer an online game…but most of all make sure your message and budget are targeted to make the most of these communities.
    
7. Make Your Traditional Media Nontraditional: Now is the time to work with media partners to make traditional media more impactful. Many print partners have opened up to going beyond the traditional full-page ad, like sticky notes, pop-ups, etc. to make sure that their advertiser’s message is more impactful than ever. Many broadcast partners have opened up interactive applications to campaigns, such as interactive voting features as seen here.
    
8. Event Marketing: Events are a great way to get in front of a targeted audience, or in front of the masses. In 2009, we predict event marketing will grow in popularity. Consumers everywhere are skipping vacations and expensive nights out and are looking for something to do. So be on the lookout for community events in your area and consider participating with an interactive booth. We predict that those local fairs and festivals will be seeing more attendees than ever. Or consider hosting your own informational seminar/webinar. Make sure you capture the data of everyone you speak to/meet, and build them into your customer communications program.
    
9. Refine Tracking and Analysis: Traditionally, if you’re not a direct response advertiser, your measurements and analytics of marketing and advertising campaigns may not be very detailed, thus making it difficult to gauge the response to your campaigns. Consider setting up more precise measurements by: assigning promo codes to your campaigns, using detailed tracking in your phone scripts and on your online contact forms, or as EGC has done, join with third party partners like Who’s Calling or TMP Direct. Either way, you will be more informed in 2009 on what works and what doesn’t.
    
10. Ask the Experts: In 2009, we’re likely to experience uncharted economic waters, and you will need a team behind you to help navigate them. The EGC Group has a host of experts in the topics of Brand Building, Research, Media Negotiation, Event Marketing, Customer Retention, Online Media, Strategic Marketing, traditional advertising and more. Call 516-935-4944 and we’d be happy to meet with you.