A new e-book by Constant Contact and HubSpot says that 76% of survey respondents promote events by e-mail and 40% use social media. Those are pretty staggering numbers, though not surprising.
I’ll say, first, that I think the 40% is due to increase. More businesses will promote events through social media in the future, especially if Google+ hangouts takes hold.
Facebook is still the most popular website online. You can’t ignore that it has turned the Internet upside down. As more and more businesses head to Facebook to take advantage of its huge user base, there will be more social media promotion. And events will be among the things that businesses promote through social media.
E-mail marketing, of course, has always enjoyed high numbers. That’s because it’s relatively easy to get the permission of someone who fits your target profile and then add them to your mailing list. Once you have permission to send e-mail promotions, you can push your events, products, services, and seek feedback all you want. An e-mail list is a hot list.
Another statistic to note is 47% of respondents still promote events through snail mail. It’s not really surprising, though I expect that number to decline as social media and other online marketing channels rise. Within 5 years, there will be fewer companies promoting events through mail and more using social media.
The U.S. postal service is dying. And it’s the Internet’s fault. Just like CDs killed the cassette tape and electricity killed the kerosene lantern, the Internet (e-mail, SMS, Twitter, et. al.) is killing snail mail.
Watch this interview with the U.S. postmaster general.
In other words, what he’s saying is the U.S. postal service is dying a slow death. It’s not a fast one. It’s a slow one. But there are some stark implications here for businesses.
If you’re used to sending out direct mail literature, your costs are going to continue to climb. Not only that, but eventually the mail will be delivered less often. That means your ROI is going to plummet. That’s the good news.
The bad news? Uh, well, let’s see … I guess there isn’t any. Unless you work for the post office, in which case you might lose your job.
This truly is good news for any business because the truth is you can get more effective marketing for less investment online. If you didn’t already know that, it’s been that way for at least five years. For many businesses, it’s been true for ten or fifteen years. Guess what? The benefits to marketing online are going to get better.
I’m not saying you should shift your entire direct mail budget to online marketing right now, but you should be considering an online marketing plan today. Get yourself set up for the inevitable decline of snail mail and U.S. postal service direct mail marketing. Online is where it’s at.
Small business owners all over the world are ga-ga over Facebook, and particularly Facebook Likes. But what’s the big deal? Are they really worth that much?
According to one marketer, if someone “Likes” your Facebook page, then they are over 90% likely to never look at it again. But what if that number is exaggerated and it’s only 45%? That’s still a lot.
Imagine getting 1,000 Likes to your Facebook page. That’s a lot of Likes by small business standards. If only 100 of those people ever return a second time, you’ve got a pretty small pool of potential customers. Does that put a Like in a whole new perspective for you?
But hold the phone. Anyone who has ever done any direct marketing knows that if you get a 2% response rate, then you’ve accomplished something. In other words, if only 20 out of 1,000 recipients to your direct mail campaign respond, then you’re making out like a bandit. So what’s so wrong with a 10% success rate?
Well, here’s the deal – that 10% isn’t actually doing anything. They’re just visiting your page again. And if you use the same 2% that you’d measure your success in direct mail by to your Facebook page, then you should measure it by positive outcomes like newsletter subscriptions, purchases, and visits to your website, not by Likes.
The bottom line is this … if you get a 2% positive outcome from among your Likes and you have 1,000 Likes, then that’s 20 new subscribers, or 20 new sales. Now cut it half – 10 new sales vs. 20. And what did it cost you? Nothing but your time. Measure that ROI against your direct mail ROI. Which one wins?
This is one of those questions that so-called experts like to ask. Is it out with the old and in with the new? Or maybe it’s just that the new is better equipped for handling the challenges of the old. Either way you ask it, the question is “Will e-mail ever replace direct mail?”
There undoubtedly will be those who answer “yes” to that question, but I’m not one of them. I certainly believe in e-mail marketing. But I also believe there will always be a market for direct mail – just as there is a market for radio, VHS and mini-skirts.
Truly effective marketing utilizes the best medium for the right audience. There will be some people you’ll reach better through e-mail marketing and there will those you’ll hook into your net with direct mail. If you use both channels to reach your audience you are more likely to get more buyers. Don’t give up on the old forms of marketing yet.
In today’s high technology world where the Internet rules, one can quickly get the impression that the old ways of doing business are no longer necessary. Some people might even say that direct mail and off line advertising are obsolete. Nothing could be further from the truth.
While I’m a big advocate of search engine marketing, social media marketing and online marketing of various sorts, I still believe off line marketing, and direct mail in particular, are still a necessary part of taking your message to your audience. Direct mail can be very effective as a supplement to your Internet marketing efforts, or vice-versa.
The principles of direct mail haven’t changed, though the methods may be slightly different for the 21st century. In your direct mail marketing you should include your e-mail address and website address. Try to drive traffic to your website using direct mail and capture e-mail addresses for further marketing. The more touch points you can create, the better you’ll do in all your marketing efforts.
E-mail marketing is a broad term. It means more than sending out a newsletter once a week or month. It does include using newsletters to communicate with your audience, but it’s much more than that.
The key defining characteristic of e-mail marketing is a list. You can’t do it without a list of contact, especially e-mail addresses. Just like the old days of direct marketing, it isn’t possible without a mailing list of names to send out your mailings. But what should you send out when you e-mail your prospects?
It depends.
E-mail marketing encompasses any correspondence you undertake with your mailing list via e-mail. That could be marketing brochures, postcards, newsletters, autoresponders, coupons, or anything that you send by e-mail. The strategy that you use to market your business through e-mail depends on several factors:
What type of business you have
Your individual business goals
The nature of your marketing campaign
The needs of your customers
The best parts of e-mail marketing fit in with your overall marketing strategy. Everything should work together. E-mail marketing is a necessary component to online marketing because an e-mail address, like mailing addresses, is something that most of your prospects – no matter what business you are in – have. People read their e-mail and they especially read e-mail that comes from people they want to receive e-mail from. That’s why getting permission is so important in e-mail marketing. You know that if you have permission to send e-mail marketing messages then people will read them. And that’s why e-mail marketing is so powerful.
This is an area where many business owners are divided. There are pros and cons to both types of marketing, but really, there`s no reason not to do both if you are already considering direct mail. Since email marketing costs virtually nothing, it doesn`t add much to the marketing costs and even if you end up with just a few people who take you up on the offers you send out, it will be worth it.
Direct mail is still used by many because of the effectiveness of actually putting information in paper form into the hands of the consumer. However, it is fairly expensive and you will find that you need to have a pretty decent budget if you decide to go with this technique.
Marketing is something that every business needs to do. Whether you are going with email marketing or direct mail, it`s a good idea to consider the possibility of doing both. After all, you can never have too much publicity.
Direct mail may be expensive, but there is a good reason companies continue to use it.
Email marketing is something that many businesses are getting into these days. While direct mail definitely has it´s place in the world of marketing, some small businesses prefer to start with email marketing, since it requires virtually no investment. Direct mail can be quite costly, even if you are taking the budget option, so it´s usually a relief for small businesses when they discover that they can go with email marketing for next to nothing.
Personally, I don´t feel that direct mail will never become completely obsolete, after all, the more people that ignore it in favor of email marketing, the more effective it will become. Email marketing is something that has become increasingly popular and is a great way to communicate with your customers and potential clients . . . but with so much spam, you really have to work harder to stand out from the crowd.
Email marketing can definitely be something that works very well to promote your products and services and it will probably continue to grow and mostly take over direct mail. The important thing is to make sure you keep learning the latest methods and techniques to keep your emails from being caught in spam filters or deleted. In fact, it´s the best way to about promotion if you are a small business and simply don´t have the resources for a big direct mail campaign.
Email marketing and direct marketing don´t have to go against each other, in fact they can work very well together. Your online subscribers may enjoy receiving an offline newsletter or vice versa. Experiment with mixing both mediums and see how it works for you and your business.
