Data points the way to more customer-led Direct Mail

Aug 4, 2014 | News

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[cs_content][cs_section parallax=”false” style=”margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;”][cs_row inner_container=”true” marginless_columns=”false” style=”margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;”][cs_column fade=”false” fade_animation=”in” fade_animation_offset=”45px” fade_duration=”750″ type=”1/1″ style=”padding: 0px;”][cs_text]This is the era of ‘big data’ and it offers opportunities for marketers to develop even more personalised campaigns for even better results.

Any personalised direct mail campaign should be customer-led; any campaign that is not customer-led is doomed to failure from the outset. But increasingly sophisticated data collection and mining is creating opportunities for marketers to develop campaigns that more closely appeal to current and potential customers.

A recent blog in Marketing Week highlights how this ‘big data’ has been used by DIY retailer HomeBase to create an award-winning campaign, but in fact, behind all the data and awards, is an old fashioned concept: the creativity of the approach was as integral to the success of the campaign as any new fangled data mining. But the data allowed the creative aspects of the campaign to be much better targeted – and therefore much more successful.

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In the blog, Russell Parsons outlined the success of the campaign as data management processes were transformed to find patterns of behaviour in transactional and non-transactional data, which in turn identified customer needs and intent. The approach intended to initiate purchases and spot further spending opportunities. Communications included targeting home movers, targeting loyal customers with bespoke magazines and emails and ‘seasonal themed’ activity, while messages were personalised around what customers had bought or a project they appeared to be working on.

Russell concluded “The better than expected results were very definitely award-winning. Sales beat targets by 17 per cent, profit by 20 per cent and ROI by 22%. ROI on some of the programmes was more than 400 per cent – 3.5 times the previous strategy, while average DM response rates more than doubled.”

The lessons for direct mail are clear: the importance of the sophisticated use of data is growing, but an approach which uses this data in a creative and targeted way is still critical in turning raw data into red hot sales!

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