The most effective campaigns we see are those which ensure that different elements are joined together to form a cohesive whole. Multi-channel campaigns, using a combination of direct mail, email and telemarketing, achieve far better results than those which just use single components, or which don’t coordinate the different elements properly. Although this may sound obvious, there is an exponential improvement in results from those campaigns which coordinate activities correctly.

The days are gone (if they ever existed…) where the humble consumer gratefully received a direct mail piece and responded obediently to the buying signals and calls to action liberally sprinkled throughout the carefully designed mailing campaign.

However compelling the offer, it is competing for attention with a myriad of other demands on the consumer’s attention. If not discarded, it sits in a state of pending, waiting for that moment of extra focus when it will be acted upon. That extra focus probably needs prodding into action through a reminder or a direct request to place an order.

The reminder can be an email which is timed to be received a couple of days after the mailing has landed, reinforcing the selling points, giving a reminder about the call to action and offering a direct click-through to an online response. The direct mail piece has prepared the ground, created an awareness and receptiveness to the email, resulting in, in our experience, double, triple or more the level of open rates, click throughs and orders.

The direct request takes the form of telemarketing follow-up. Unless the campaign is an extremely direct, generous and aggressive discount offer, which will generate a high response rate on its own, it’s likely that prompting through telemarketing can prove to be a worthwhile investment.

Timing is everything though, with the follow-up call best coordinated to be within 48 hours of the follow-up email having been sent out. This gives a day for the email to be responded to and therefore to remove the need to call that percentage which replies to the direct mail piece and/or email, but is still soon enough for the consumer to be able to recall the campaign. By being a follow-up call to these other pieces of activity, it is now a ‘warm call’, benefitting from some existing awareness.

If it proves from call responses that recall of the campaign is extremely low, then this is valuable feedback to the marketing team to be more effective next time!

So, planning is everything, ensuring that email follow-up and telemarketing resources are in place BEFORE the whole campaign is set in motion. To use direct mail and then hit the panic button when response is not sufficient is unlikely to result in a joined-up campaign with impressive results. Link the elements together at the outset and you could be on to a winner…