You can’t follow the herd and expect great comms results
Mark Hollander, Specialist Content Director
I judge financial marketing effectiveness awards. And looking at a large number of entries from companies of all sizes, zigging while most are zagging impacts on outcomes.
Most financial services organisations depend on emails, digital advertising, search etc and the like to do their campaign heavy lifting. And receive satisfactory (or declining) response rates as industry volumes, saturation and the reader’s world-weariness prevail.
Well, these are dyed in the wool media. No one’s going to get fired for putting them on the media plan.
More effective campaign results often come, though, from using media people are rarely using. Or combining the two. Direct mail’s a good example. It may be you receive 50 cold emails a day, but when was the last time you got mail? Hardly ever.
So, the results achieved from thinking laterally are impressive. Direct mail warm response rates are up 26% year-on-year and 21% for prospects. 76% of mail is being read. Mail isn’t the right animal for every task. but makes business sense for higher value segments, the time-poor, lapsed customers and traditionally one-to-one audiences like institutional. You can even include goodies in your mailing, creating memorability, talkability and, (from the results I see) conversations and sales.
Other rarely used media are also having a renaissance. Media that have fallen out of common marketing use, such as the lesser-sported insert are now driving responses again. Because today they’re often the only item inserted in the publication, rather than the deck of cards of years ago.
Outbound calls and follow-ups are, for the same reason, on the rise again. Not call centre style but targeted, professional and with a clear value offering in exchange for the individual’s precious time.
Geo targeting, real-time programmatic analysis and social algorithmic alignment are all improving media performance, but this isn’t impacting on the volumes of mainstream communications people are receiving. Thinking distinctly from the herd is more likely to get you heard.
