Recent research throws light on the reasons why it’s worth considering direct mail as part of a communication programme.

• Direct mail is universal – Royal Mail reaches virtually the whole population.
• You can target mail – 90% of consumers are more likely to open mail if they are a customer of the sender.
• 89% of adults keep all their bills and statements.
• 92% of direct mail is opened but only 12% of acquisition email.
• There has been a steady rise in ROI for direct mail between 2006 and 2009.
• Response rates have risen from 4% in 2004 to 5% in 2010.
• 75% like being informed of special offers or promotions by post.
• 17.7m GB adults ordered something after receiving a mail order catalogue in the post in the past 12 months.
• 58% of those over 65 have not accessed the Internet in the past year.

Click here to see the full presentation (link to PDF)

Secure fulfilment – an information security perspective

Murphy’s Law states that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of fulfilment and logistics, where the volume and complexity of everyday life gives abundant opportunity for errors and inaccuracies – all with a high level of exposure. The key is to choose partners well-acquainted with Murphy’s Law, with the ability to put secure plans into place to avoid them – or stop them before they are even anticipated.

Suppose, for example, that the fulfilment house receives an urgent request to deliver certain goods, but cannot find them in the warehouse. Perhaps this is because of a malfunction in the location system or the result of simple data input error. The system says the goods are in pallet location XYZ, but location XYZ is empty. Maybe it is because the goods have just been mislocated, or maybe, due to unprecedented demand, stock has just run out but the system has not yet been updated…

Creating one, seamless collateral delivery system

In the everyday reality of corporate business, the habit of producing marketing collateral is frequently undertaken as a response to a need without necessarily addressing the business case for producing it:

• Most organisations produce marketing collateral out of habit
• Most organisations produce twice as much as they need
• Most organisations don’t know what they actually need

Companies produce marketing collateral because the internal system says so – producing large arbitrary quantities of material without understanding why that collateral is being produced, to what end and without the means to measure its effectiveness or considering the long-term cost implications…

Answering the challenge of collateral management and marketing outside the United States

Successful marketing campaigns outside the US demand something very challenging of marketing management: a way with words in languages you do not speak.

If you are selling in a country, you must market to the customer in their language, in the way that will help your sales force win as much business as possible. And it must be done in such a way that the minutiae of language, format and messaging is managed meticulously, whilst the bigger picture your management requires of you – most notably return on marketing spend – is monitored to ensure you are sending the right deliverable to the right customer. Having numerous owners and agencies will not give a cohesive view, and in fact, makes the marketing organization responsible as the one discernible point of control – something most managers find very difficult to manage…

World-class advertising, branding and design all demand talented clients who understand the value of risk-taking

Much of today’s advertising, branding and design seems reminiscent of Macbeth’s comments about life: “… a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

That sense of ‘signifying nothing’ seems particularly apt. Take the current branding exercise at ITV, for example, where the broadcaster is currently undergoing its fourth re-branding exercise in only ten years.

That effort, detailed by Raymond Snoddy in Marketing (11 January 2006), is called ‘Brand 2010′. Naturally, it is backed by extensive research and in-depth analysis, which has included communicating with 6,000 viewers and conducting innumerable workshops with ITV staff. It has also been supported by the considerable talents and resources of M&C Saatchi and Sir Martin Sorrell’s MindShare…

Brands, values and excellence – it’s not what you say, it’s what you do that counts

Given that you have an excellent brand – it should be, it’s cost enough – what do you do now? Brands get lonely and wither if left alone. They need to be implemented and constantly nurtured. Only then can the brand really move the company forward. A three-pronged attack is needed for true success – brand, company values and the pursuit of excellence. And they all need to work harmoniously with close attention paid not just to what you say to customers but how you say it.

Brand implementation begins at home
Brands set the framework by which products and services are perceived by customers. Unless the brand stands for something, it stands for nothing.

In their book “A Brand New World”, Scott Bedbury and Stephen Fenichell state simply that, “the brand is the sum total of everything a company does”. Put like that, it is clear that brands need to be rooted deeply in the philosophy and driving force of the company…

The strategic imperative behind multichannel branding

Why should a customer pay a premium for your product when information about your cheaper competitor’s prices and service is only a few clicks away using the Internet? Because you are doing everything you can to ensure that your brand message is heard across all channels to attract the increasingly indistinguishable online and offline shopper.

New kid on the block
Multichannel branding is not new. What is new is the addition of the Internet to the list of available, more traditional channels: print, radio and television. Large companies could once control these limited communications channels and dominate a geographic market using vast amounts of money. Now, the Internet provides companies large and small the same opportunity to reach customers quickly and efficiently, making online branding a critical business requirement…

Internal communications: building the brand from the inside out

As the world economy struggles to gather pace, companies continue to review and cut back their physical assets – regional locations, unprofitable products, head counts. The pressure to restore profits leads also to cuts in investments that support intangible assets, including brands, often without appreciating the consequences.

Brands are no longer the preserve of advertising agencies and public relations companies to help create a favourable image in the market. A brand can and should be a rallying call that defines a set of values and commitments for the company and helps employees realise those commitments…

How to write an internal communications plan and sell it through senior management

Executives don’t dispute the need for improved employee communications, and an increase in the establishment of dedicated internal communications managers is proof of their good intent. Whether they are situated within Human Resources (HR) or as an extension of marketing, managers find themselves with an exciting remit, an important audience and a significant role to fill.

On the face of it, the investment in internal communications is real. But, dig a bit deeper, and one critical element is often missing: a dedicated budget.

Without adequate funding (and, in some cases, any funding), internal communications enters a no man’s land of “responsibility, with very little control”. Without a budget, managers can orchestrate correct email protocols or consolidated presentation templates, but little else…

Will outsourcing transform your marketing communications processes?

It’s common practice to contract agencies for capabilities that don’t exist in-house – like branding or design – but these are typically one-off projects. With outsourcing, a marketing director makes the agency focus on results rather than on the process itself. Instead of instructing the agency how to do the work, the client specifies what it wants to achieve and lets the agency determine how to achieve those ends. The agency becomes directly (and contractually) accountable for success. Outsourcing offers a number of important business benefits:

Improved productivity
Through increased speed to market and contractual agreements that mandate shorter cycle times, more targeted localisation and increased output. By outsourcing, marketing directors have the skill set they need to be first in the market as new opportunities emerge without the limitations of in-house skill sets. A study conducted last year by Accenture found that executives frequently struggle to shorten the time it takes to create and launch a campaign. On average the campaign cycle time is 2.5 months, with a third of companies taking up between two and four months to launch.1 If your competitor can launch in two months but it takes you four, you are clearly at a disadvantage. Outsourcing levels the playing field…