Successful Omnichannel Marketing Requires Direct Response Expertise

OMNICHANNELMARKETINGTESTSTRATEGYMULTICHANNELDIRECTMARKETINGDIRECTMARKETINGROLEINOMNICHANNELMARKETING
Written By Ted Grigg
DMCG Results

The digital revolution requires omnichannel marketing for marketing success. There is one strategy that often gets overlooked, and that is direct marketing.

Contrary to popular belief, direct marketing is not about the direct mail channel. It's about direct response and its ability to generate leads and close sales regardless of the channels used.

Strong websites create demand for the product and find a way to start a conversation about the product with site visitors. Direct response dominates the Internet generating leads and making special offers to close the sale.

The Importance of Integrating Direct Response

Knowledgeable direct marketers optimize the sales ability of direct mail, landing pages, email, websites and broadcast. It is important to note that omnichannel marketing occurs whether planned or not. The majority of direct mail respondents check out the company's website before responding. This is particularly true of lesser known companies, products or services.

All communications from the company must speak with one voice, one brand, and one primary selling proposition. Acquisition results suffer when the offer is unknown to the inbound telemarketing team or the landing page does not reinforce the selling message.

Digital agencies, general agencies and in-house marketing teams often do not understand the critical direct marketing strategies that propel response in omnichannel marketing.

Testing is a Fundamental Direct Response Strategy

Testing drives direct response success. Tracking responses by channel determine the most effective acquisition offers. All things are testable when compared to a control marketing position. Properly structured tests incorporate a control that assures proper analysis of the results. The control eliminates all of the variables.

Experienced direct marketers know how to structure tests for projectable results with scalability. They set up tests to determine what specific treatments lift response rates and sales conversions.

Direct response professionals test at every opportunity. They know that long term success means always trying to beat your most successful effort.

Tap Into the House File To Target the Best Prospects

Novice marketers squander future growth for short-term sales. They neglect the opportunities to invest in the learning available from the company's house database. Direct marketers maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns by matching the characteristics of their own customers to find like individuals when targeting prospects.

In turn, direct response creative people create messaging and graphics that work best specific segments of their target markets. Recent customers receive a different message than prospects. And previous inquirers receive yet another treatment. Effective direct response creative work requires database segmentation for email, direct mail and other targetable channels.

Direct Response Expertise Must Permeate the Entire Marketing Team For Successful Omnichannel Marketing

Some companies do not separate direct marketing strategists from direct marketing channel specialists.

Make sure the people you rely upon for successful acquisition understand how to use direct response copy, offer development, and relational databases to increase response.

Do not view direct marketing executive roles as media channel specific. Such people know the best direct marketing strategies for all channels.

Strong direct marketers create customer buying experiences that maximize lifetime value.

Intense attention to CRM runs deep within all competent direct marketers. This capability supersedes software knowledge. This type of professional asks what, when, why and how customers respond to maximize the company’s ROI. A seasoned direct marketer knows how acquisition methods influence long term retention.

Great direct marketers gather data, analyze it and test hypotheses.

They strive to understand customers’ behavior patterns and what they will likely respond to. They understand the company's customer relational database and become leading customer advocates.

Seek direct marketing talent and develop it in your marketing team. Your asset will include broad-view strategists at the top rather than pure tacticians who look at all channels with an open mind.


Ted Grigg
What Ted does best is increase response by beating controls, applying multiple channels to target markets, profiling customer databases and generally improving sales results using deep direct marketing principles. Regard Ted as your personal “think-tank” for your direct marketing planning and strategy development. After analyzing several hundred million dollars of direct response testing in all channels, he brings with him the knowledge accumulated from seeing what tends to work and what does not. Having worked on both the agency and client side of direct marketing, Ted understands the unique challenges faced by agencies and their clients. Agencies need to sell themselves and deliver sales results. And clients not only require results, but need ideas they can implement while focusing on tracking response using a relational database. If Ted brings nothing else to the table, by profiling customer databases and creating response propensity models, he quickly becomes the clients’ expert on their own customers. His formal training includes a BA from Abilene Christian University and two years of graduate work at Texas Tech University. For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, Ted developed a revolutionary direct mail format that beat most standing direct mail controls for this company. He also generated more profitable business for this firm by expanding compiled list circulation of less than 10% to more than 30% of total direct mail circulation within a year. (Insurance business generated by direct mail demonstrated higher persistency than customers coming from other media such as print and DRTV.) Ted’s plan and implementation of Medicare lead generation campaigns for over 60 regional and national HMO/PPO organizations combined multiple channels that surpassed some sales projections by as much as 60%. Additional industry experience over the last 30 years includes B2B or B2C for finance, securities, home security, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, government, technology, nonprofit, retail, transportation, communications, and multiple categories in the services industry. As the founder of Wyse Direct (a division for Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, OH), he successfully launched and branded a new technology product for Seiko-Mead by supporting a nationwide sales team with a predictable flow of qualified sales leads. While a VP of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, Ted acted as the direct marketing strategist who refocused the agency’s culture to attract new commercial and fundraising accounts. At the time, Grizzard was essentially a direct mail fund raising production operation. His leadership and team building effectiveness prepared Grizzard for the eventual Omnicom acquisition and Grizzard’s successful integration into Omnicom’s large group of advertising agencies. An independent DM consultant, Ted continues to write numerous articles and conduct webinars on direct marketing techniques. He also wrote The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan — A Step-by-Step Guide publishing it through Executive Enterprises in New York City. During his youth, Ted was raised in Lille, France with his missionary family attending French schools becoming fluent in reading and writing French. Away from the job, Ted is a computer geek, blogger and science fiction buff!
http://www.dmcgresults.com
Previous

3 Reasons Why Direct Mail Works
Next

10 Steps to High Response Direct Mail Creative