Integrated Marketing
Using a range of both offline and online marketing methods can result in increased sales and profit as you target a far wider audience than online alone can provide.
Effective integrated marketing benefits greatly from an accurate, up to date database that holds detailed information about the buying habits and demographics of your customers. It also benefits from knowing the preferred communication method of your clients. The benefit also comes from being able to develop a customer contact strategy based on return on investment.
An effective integrated campaign might include some or all of the following elements. Other marketing tools such as broadcast media can also play their role in such a campaign.
Direct Mail
These are some of the reasons why offline mail activity can help to deliver increased overall sales.
- Direct mail allows you to proactively target your precise audience. Direct mail lists allow a much more refined level of targeting of your potential customers than you can achieve via online. Lists are available that can be refined to quite a detailed level of targeting for consumers and businesses. If you are purely using online methods you are dependent on people inputting the optimum keywords for your site.
- Direct mail and catalogues provide you with the ability to describe products, features and benefits in greater detail than is possible online.
- Direct mail and catalogues have a permanency that allows for them to be kept and re-read at any time and any place the recipient wants to. It is much more convenient and quicker to sit down and browse through a catalogue or read a direct mail piece than browsing a website. Most people lead busy lives and are looking for the most time effective way to buy.
- Marketing material arriving in the mail acts as a reminder that your company and its products are there and will act as sales stimulus.
- Direct mail and catalogues are a proactive sales tool driving sales, whereas online is a more reactive process. Using offline tools thus allows you greater control over your sales process.
- Average order values can be up to 15% higher using mail rather than online only. See research items that illustrate the potential uplift in sales that can be achieved
- E-mail can be highly personalised to the individual based on data held in database.
- It is a very immediate method and is excellent for creating urgency to respond by time limited offers.
- E-mail can be used as a teaser or follow up to a mail campaign to increase overall mail response.
- It also beneficial being used to cross-sell and up-sell from products bought and for follow up to basket abandonment.
- Highly targeted even for new customer acquisition. Similar to direct mail list are available that allow you to target your audience specifically so you don’t waste time and money contacting those that have no interest in your product or service.
Phone
Phone follow up to people who have clicked through on an e-mail campaign but haven’t converted can result in increased sales. It also provides valuable information on why the experience didn’t result in a conversion.
Social Media
Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in and the other social media sites can all be used to good effect in an overall integrated marketing effort. The biggest benefit is providing a greater level of exposure of your business in the market place. But it can also help to improve and develop relationships with customers driving the growth of greater loyalty and trust. It also gives you the opportunity to watch what your competitors are doing as well. Your customer service can benefit too from listening to your customers and providing a quick response to negative talk.
