Latest research by database and loyalty marketing specialist GI Insight reveals that just under half of UK consumers are driven to visit a company website by an item of direct mail. Despite the growth of email and proliferation of other digital channels, the research shows that online traffic is largely driven by direct mail, with 47% of UK consumers saying that ‘more often than not’ they are prompted to check out a website by something they have received in the post.

Just over a third (34%) of respondents declare that most of the direct marketing they receive, notice and take action on comes through the post, and 33% say they are more responsive to email-only communications – leaving another third who are not driven solely by marketing activity across a single channel, but are more likely to take action if they receive a combination of post and email communications.

The continuing importance of direct mail in a multi-channel era was also highlighted by the finding that more than half of UK consumers (52%) declare that they receive most of the promotions and special offers they redeem in-store or online though the post. And 43% of respondents also say that direct mail items they keep around at home act as reminders to visit the sender’s website or shop when they have the time to do so.

Andy Wood, managing director of GI Insight, comments: “These findings clearly demonstrate that direct mail is still an extremely powerful tool, even in the digital age, and plays a pivotal role in any business’ efforts to contact consumers – despite increasing use of email and regardless of the channel that consumers choose to actually purchase through.”

Additional findings of report include:

• Surprisingly, 53% of digitally savvy 18 to 24-year-olds say they most often go to check out a website because of something they have received in the post – while fewer than half of all other consumers do so

• Over a third of consumers – 35% – say that if they receive a notice through the post that is backed by a subsequent email, they are more likely to take action

• Men are more likely than women to take action because they have received an email reminder as a follow-up to an item of direct mail they were sent – 37% versus 32%

• Close to a third of consumers – 34% – say they regularly receive at least two catalogues containing products they buy, whether in-store or online, with a higher proportion of men getting them than women

• Women are more likely than men to visit a website because of something that they have received through the post – 49% compared to 44%

Wood notes: “The report highlights that the UK customer journey from marketing communication to in-store or website purchase is anything but linear. There may be a number of messages that influence the consumer’s behaviour. Evidently, one of the real drivers of many purchases is the reminder – whether it is a piece of post set aside, or an email sent to reinforce a mailer. To ensure that these reminders are pertinent and part of an organic strategy, all dialogue with the customer must be informed by data and analysis.

“Only by embracing full customer insight and responding aptly to customer behaviour with relevant messages and offers can companies communicate more effectively and personally with individual consumers. By using data and analysis to better understand how customers are making their purchasing decisions, firms can find the most engaging mix of channels for each customer and gain a decisive edge on competitors.”

The role of direct mail today

Effectiveness of different channel combinations

About GI Insight
GI Insight specialises in database marketing and loyalty schemes, having created and managed more retail loyalty programmes than anyone else in the UK. The Leicester-based company offers a full range of database marketing services including consultancy, database design/build/host, data capture, analysis, segmentation, profiling, campaign execution and measurement, available as a whole or on a ‘pick and mix’ basis. The analysis and interpretation of your sales and customer data enables you to influence customer behaviour. This knowledge helps you to reliably increase profitability by:

• Getting more new customers (acquisition)
• Getting existing customers to:
o Spend more often
o Spend more per transaction
• Reducing Customer Attrition (retention)

For more information, please visit www.gi-solutionsgroup.com

 New research from customer insight specialist GI Insight reveals that UK consumers take a truly multi-channel approach to shopping for non-supermarket goods, using a range of touch points for browsing and purchasing. The study indicated that the vast majority of consumers prefer to research goods and services online before going to the high street to actually make their purchases.

 The GI Insight survey of 2,000 consumers from around the UK showed that 72% of consumers prefer to browse and research their purchases online, while only 19% of shoppers prefer to vet their potential purchases in-store. The study also revealed that almost equal proportions of consumers state a preference for making their non-supermarket purchases on the internet and in a store – 46% online and 47% on the high street. In addition, the figures indicate a niche of consumers still prefer to do their browsing and buying via print catalogue – 5% and 3% respectively.

 The findings show that men prefer to browse and buy online – with 50% purchasing on the internet compared to 42% of women, and 74% browsing on the web compared to 69% of women. Women show a greater preference for shopping on the high street than men, with 52% preferring to purchase in-store compared to 41% of men, and 22% browsing in store versus 17% of men.

 Older consumers show a marked inclination for buying in-store with 62% of respondents in the 55 to 64 age group stating they prefer to buy in a shop and only 33% giving online as their preference – but their browsing habits were more in line with the average, as 69% say they prefer to do their research online.

 Andy Wood, managing director of GI Insight, comments: “These figures clearly indicate that UK consumers see shopping as a multi-channel activity and process.

 “The most obvious trend evident in the findings is that consumers often look for and research products online – doing price comparisons and checking product reviews – before going to the high street to buy in-store. But the reverse can also be true and undoubtedly a smaller proportion of shoppers go to the high street to look, feel and try out – or try on – their prospective purchases before going home to buy online.”

 While the findings indicate that a core of consumers expect firms to be accessible both online and on the high street – and, for some, via catalogue as well – the vast majority will still buy from a brand that does not offer one of the major channels for purchasing. Only 28% say they would not purchase from a firm that failed to offer online shopping while just 23% would refuse to buy from a brand without a high street presence – and merely 11% demand that a company have a catalogue.

 Consumers with the highest household incomes are most wedded to high street brands – 53% of those in the £100,000-£149,000 household income range and 44% of those in the £150,000-plus bracket say they would only buy from a firm with high street presence, compared with just over 20% in lower income groups.

 A significant proportion of consumers, however, do expect businesses to offer a range of options for getting in direct contact with the company – with 39% saying they would switch to a competitor if a firm they deal with did not offer choice in this area, and more than 48% saying this would be the case with a company they had not bought from before.

 Wood notes: “The results show a large majority don’t mind if a brand is only available over one channel for purchasing – underlining the fact that most consumers are flexible enough to switch channels where necessary. But when it comes to getting in touch with a company for general information, taking up an offer, help, servicing, problems, complaints and other forms of communication, a sizable proportion of consumers do want a choice of channel for getting in touch with that firm.”

 He adds: “Brands can’t view their businesses in silos – as stand-alone web or bricks-and-mortar operations with separate customers – because that is not how consumers view them. For consumers, a brand is the same over the internet as it is in its mail-order catalogues as it is on the high street as it is over the phone. And when it comes to customer service, they expect a firm to be accessible through their preferred touch point, whether that is email, web form, phone, post, or face-to-face.

 “More than ever, businesses operating across channels need to understand their customers’ shopping habits and preferences. How a customer will respond to a company and through which channel is very murky once you aggregate data to the top level. The only way to deal with it is to track each consumer with data and analysis and respond accordingly.”

About GI Insight

GI Insight specialises in database marketing and loyalty schemes, having created and managed more retail loyalty programmes than anyone else in the UK. The Leicester-based company offers a full range of database marketing services including consultancy, database design/build/host, data capture, analysis, segmentation, profiling, campaign execution and measurement, available as a whole or on a ‘pick and mix’ basis. The analysis and interpretation of your sales and customer data enables you to influence customer behaviour. This knowledge helps you to reliably increase profitability by: 

•   Getting more new customers (acquisition)
•   Getting existing customers to (retention):
  •    Spend more often
  •    Spend more per transaction

For more information, please visit www.gi-solutionsgroup.com

If you’re still in the throws of planning and willing to adapt to market movements, this vlog is a must watch.

Enjoy and have a very Merry Christmas and wish you a prosperous New Year!

]]> http://www.lindsellmarketing.com/index.php/we-think/vlog-top-marketing-tips-for-2011/feed 0 http://www.lindsellmarketing.com/index.php/we-think/the-irony-of-social-media http://www.lindsellmarketing.com/index.php/we-think/the-irony-of-social-media#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:41:51 +0000 Dina Morton http://www.lindsellmarketing.com/?p=686 Social media has become an obsession.  I feel as if the media has gone mad about it, with articles being published here, there and everywhere analysing the ‘power of social media’.  Well I stumbled (via a social media recommend) across a neat little video that explains all this far more effectively than any of the articles or blogs I’ve read, whilst also showing us how it has become the centre of the regular punter’s universe and penetrated every day life.

The central point of this video is how Facebook and the like become all consuming.  Your friendships and relationships are just as digital as they are ‘real’.  The more you use it, the more you propagate it, despite its sometimes negative consequences (queue the girlfriend dumping the central character) .

The one thing that makes this so clever is not actually the video itself but the effect of it.  Bearing in mind the point its making, the irony of producing such an effective video on social media platforms, like this video, is that it will inevitably go viral.  People will pass it on, show their friends, and yes, blog about it. Therefore, I feel really rather cliché for (a) having found this on a social networking site and (b) for doing what I’m about to do – but as it’s so good, have to share with you.  What this does prove however is that video or any other media really does rely on good content and clever concepts for the viral phenomenon to happen.

Watch and enjoy … and if you want to be part of the cliché why not share it too!

One sobering thought though.  Our survey also found that over 50% of the business population felt none of the political parties could be trusted to manage economic recovery.  Politicians of all colours need to get re-engaged with the UK’s wealth creation community, whoever wins on May 6th.

Campaign magazine’s table of the biggest UK media agencies showed eight of the top 10 suffered a drop in billings between 2008 and 2009 – including a more than 10% slump by number one agency MediaCom, a 16.5 % fall by number four Mindshare and a 22.5% plunge by number six Starcom UK Group. The headlines also showed that WPP Group, which owns Mindshare, saw its profits fall by 16% in 2009.

But is there more to these figures than just the recession? We are now living in an age where companies are realising that they can rely less on traditional media vehicles such as newspapers, radio and even television and can instead speak more directly with their customers through digital media.

We already see print media owners struggling as newspapers and magazines grapple with ever-shrinking page counts and staff cuts. The long-term trend may be that the fragmenting TV marketplace, radio and other conventional media will be facing similar issues sooner rather than later.

Before the recent news on media agencies seeing their billings slump, we had a lot of talk in PR Week about Richard Sambrook, former head of global news at the BBC, jumping on the PR bandwagon to become “chief content officer” at a global PR agency to help clients create written, video and audio pieces.

This recognition that, in future, communicating with customers, stakeholders and the public at large will be about more than traditional PR – ie. placing articles in print publications or arranging broadcast interviews for clients – is nothing new to us here at Lindsell Marketing. Generating content that can fuel PR initiatives, marketing campaigns, websites, sales programmes and other ways of talking to the marketplace is a future that has already arrived here.

So while the recession may have accelerated the process, the change we see taking place in the way companies, government departments and other organisations communicate with the world around them is a permanent shift we have seen coming – and that includes PR as well as other traditional ways that companies communicate. The key going forward will be to develop the right content to fuel the new communication engines that are replacing traditional media vehicles.

Our sector seems to have an extraordinary propensity for internicine squabbles, and a highly developed talent for being unable to see the wood for the trees.  Part of the issue has to be that our trade bodies are hugely fragmented into a series of subcategories – sales promotion, advertising, direct marketing, digital marketing, live events, and so on.  These are all largely the result of a yesteryear situation where different media were competing for the same above-the-line media spend.  Yet are we not now living in a converged world? The majority of campaigns and customer management strategies are now conceived – media-wise – as multi-channel.   So the old  negotiating position, pitting media against one another in a largely false  ‘either/or’ fight, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  Therefore, a fragmented set of trade associations makes no sense, even from a practical point of view.

It’s time the marketing industry had a single body to represent its interests.  None currently exists.  There would be no point in an existing body like the IPA or the DMA taking over the whole marketing scene – their single issue past (and frankly flabby track-record on effective lobbying), would not help present a holistic image.  So a new group is needed, possibly a federated concern of which existing associations make up the subgroups.

Getting agreement that such a body should exist is probably not going to be too difficult.  Getting co-operation between the egoistic heads of trade associations may be a little more challenging.

Last year saw a turning point in its organisation. The organisers stepped up their game in terms of thought leadership, and this year are offering up to 80 sessions and keynotes from leading industry organisations like Google, Chartered Institute of Marketing and YouTube. This was also helped by the move in 2008 from the smaller Olympia venue to a larger presence at Earls Court. All this has transformed the show into a valuable industry leading event at a time when it would have been easy for the organisers to sit on their laurels being the only DM show around.

Thought leadership, analysis and industry insight has clearly become the focus, drawing in the visitors and exhibitors. And yet looking at the TFM press room, the exhibitor publicity is seriously lacking in effective thought leadership content.  The usual, mundane, “We’re going to be at TFM, this is what we do, please come and visit our stand” is the rule rather than the exception.  Snoozzz. Why not generate original research or publicise your client successes to help you stand out and draw interested punters in?

Luckily my colleague Hugh Filman will be visiting the show.  If you want advice on how to create an effective trade show PR strategy, that is more than a bland press release, flag him down – he’ll be more than happy to help!

The trend has already started with companies turning to everyday employees to promote the brand rather than expensive famous faces. High street banks are an obvious example (although, ironically, the gurning Halifax Howard has now become a minor celebrity in his own right).

Then, of course, there have been the major brand embarrassments. Tiger Woods, John Terry, Ashley Cole – all previously lending their name and face to at least one product in between their extra-curricular activities.

Surely, any clear-thinking marketing managers will now think twice about the relative benefits of celebrity endorsement. Perhaps there will be a swing back to true creativity – where it’s the message and the image that sells, rather than the face.