Print
What’s old is new again! And what’s new is essential to today’s marketers. Print is not dead. Email is still one of the most cost-effective tools you can use, and there are ways to make your emails stand out to your audience. Regardless of the media that you choose to use to best reach your members, what works is a mix of channels, delivered to targets, driven by data.
Email + Direct Mail = Campaign Success
The best performing marketing campaigns include a combination of email and direct mail elements. Combining these channels results in a lift of 35% over using just one of these mediums! Campaigns that win awards and yield the best results include direct mail and email components. Each channel has their own advantages:
- The recipient spends more time looking at direct mail.
- Direct mail can include elements such as PURL’s and QR codes connecting it to the digital campaign.
- Size, style, and format options for print pieces are endless.
- There is no material cost when sending an email.
- Email can be A/B tested to deliver the strongest version of your message to the widest audience.
- Your website and other digital campaign elements can be linked to your email, making more information just a click away.
Getting Everyone on the Same Page
Did you know that data analytics software sales are expected to increase to over $17 billion this year? While this is an impressive figure, data-driven marketing goes beyond statistics, reporting, and numbers. More than ever before, managers across your credit union need to understand what tools are available and how they work in order to implement and promote the usage of data at your credit union. Tools and software are crucial to data-driven marketing, but it cannot be overstated how important it is for credit union leadership to buy in when establishing that member data is a valuable tool to leverage strategically moving forward.
“Almost every campaign we collaborate with credit unions on includes both email and direct mail components,” stated Doug MacDonald, Synergent Vice President of Marketing Services. “This one-two combination, driven by data, consistently creates measurable results that are greater than the sum of the parts. The incremental expense of deploying both tactics in tandem provides campaigns results that are dramatically more efficient in increasing ROI, response rates, and profits for credit unions.”
Demystifying the Marketing Magic
There is no “one size fits all” when putting together any marketing campaign, but the process can be simplified. The creative elements should connect across channels, making your campaign easily recognizable, regardless of if the delivery is digital or print. And get back to the basics of Marketing 101 with the 40/40/20 Rule: 40% of campaign success comes from your targeted list, 40% from the offer itself, and 20% from your creative elements (artwork and content).
The timing of the pieces depends on the specifics of your campaign. Deciding whether to send the email first, the print piece, or letting them fly at the same time depends on your strategy, what your credit union is offering, and who you are targeting:
- Are you trying to generate leads using emails you’ve acquired from a recent conference that your credit union presented at? With prospects, you may wish to start with email, reserving direct mail as a conversion tool.
- Are you trying to send an offer to your loyal, long-term members? Print may be the place to start, connecting the piece to digital channels with a follow-up email.
- Onboarding new members? This may provide you with an opportunity to establish their preferred communication methods from the start and to target accordingly as you build the relationship with this member.
Assembling Your Own Award-Winning Campaign
When getting started on any marketing campaign, consider taking the following steps:
- Always start by answering: What is the goal?
- Let the data guide you. Expert analysis of your member or prospect data is the cornerstone of every successful marketing campaign.
- A properly executed Transactional Data Mining campaign that incorporates multichannel marketing can be implemented regularly (quarterly or semi-annually), then repeated to more closely target your audience to achieve specific goals.
- Have a compelling offer. Even if the marketing campaign is perfectly executed, but the member doesn’t benefit from the offer, the campaign will not be successful. The offer has to be the right offer, for the right member, at the right time.
- Analyze the results of every campaign and learn from them. The more campaigns you do, the more you can analyze and learn, and the better you get at it.
Conclusion
The key to successful data-driven marketing is striking the balance between quantitative data and qualitative feedback that you receive from your members. While data provides significant insights, it also is important to hear what your members are telling you. Identifying how you will use your data, providing training and education to your staff, implementing a data analytics strategy, and reviewing your reports to guide your marketing efforts while listening to member feedback will help your credit union achieve campaign success.
