When asked about the possibility of life in the Universe outside of our planet, an astronomer working for NASA answered; “If you take a cup and fill it with water from the ocean, you probably wouldn’t see any life. To assume there is no other life in the universe is to assume that there is no life in the ocean because you didn’t find any in your cup. That’s how little of the Universe we understand.” The vanity of assuming there is no other life in the Universe is symptomatic of a lack of information. A marketing campaign isn’t quite as grand as the Universe, but in your world it probably is. The Universe of marketing is brimming with possibilities and untapped resources that you may not be taking advantage of. Perhaps lack of information in your universe is robbing your campaigns of these opportunities.
Information plays a crucial role in two parts of your campaign. At the genesis of a campaign, your concern should be the quality of your list. It used to be that a quality list was just having all of the names current and addresses updated. Nowadays, you need a bit more. For example, it’s great to know that John Smith still lives at 33 Sherman Lane in New Haven, CT, but do you know anything else about John? If you’re selling insurance, do you know whether John owns a car, or is close to retirement, or has children that need insurance? Those are examples of the intelligence you need from the beginning. Now, I know this is all target marketing 101, but stay with me here. There are some really cool things you can be doing with this information.
What if your direct mail piece gave John a personalized URL to visit? Using the information you have on John, you could display personalized images that are applicable to him. You can offer him products and promotions that are targeted just to him, something that speaks directly to his needs. Target marketing on the most basic level is hitting the right prospects based on a few demographics. Target marketing has evolved into personalization. If you’re not personalizing your campaign, then you’re really not speaking directly with individuals, you’re just marketing to a group.
Having more information about your campaign prospects will help enhance your follow up capabilities as well. Going back to John and his insurance needs; let’s say John visits your campaign’s landing page and fills out a form because he’s interested in your personalized offer. Since you already know where John lives, what his interest in insurance is and, specifically, what product is appropriate for him, you can direct that lead to the appropriate sales person or office based on geography and also specialty. Someone can follow up with John’s request with the advantage of already knowing a little bit about him. Furthermore, you can use the information you already know about John and whatever additional details he provided to automatically send the data directly to your CRM software and have it categorized and formatted properly.
Another advantage to the personalized approach is that you can require less of your prospects. For example, when they get to the landing page you can have all of their information pre-populated in a form so that responding to your offer is very easy. They will also be more likely to provide additional details and qualifying information, because there is a bunch of information they don’t have to fill out. Don’t overlook how impactful this feature can really be in your campaign response. There is a coffee website that I order my coffee supplies from for my home office. I don’t order from them because they have the best selection or lowest prices. I order from them because they send personalized reminders every month to me. When I click on their emails it takes me to my personalized order page with all of my information filled out. All I need to do is select the coffee I want and hit confirm. I don’t even need to login because the personalized email is embedded with that information. I love the simplicity of it.
So allow me to assume this all sounds pretty good to you. But the question becomes, do I have all of this information on my prospects? Maybe not, and that’s OK. You can use the information you do have to enhance your personalized campaign and further enhance your database. For example, let’s say all you knew about John was his address. You could send John a personalized direct mail piece and email that invites him to visit his personalized landing page. On that page you could still add all of the information you do know about him and ask him for a bit more. Perhaps offer him a premium or special of some sort just for answering a few questions and confirming his information. We have used this approach at Structural Graphics many times to insure our database is up-to-date. We simply ask people to provide a bit more information about themselves so we can send them information about our products and services that are relevant to them and their business or industry. Finally, you’ll be able to feed all of that data directly into your CRM.
For as long as we have been creating campaigns for our clients, we have always stressed the importance of a solid prospect list. You can send the coolest direct mail piece with the best offer, but without being targeted and personalized, it’s just junk mail. Advancements in online and offline technologies have created some really powerful opportunities for combining print and digital in your campaigns. To take advantage of these opportunities you need the right information. There is quite literally an entire Universe out there that is yet to be explored, the same is true for marketing.
