Five tips to stretch your marketing dollars and increase your ROI

It’s no secret, most marketing budgets have been drastically cut over the past few years and clients continue to look to their trusted partners for creative suggestions on how to maximize their marketing dollars. Here are five tried and true tips that have helped our clients execute successful, profitable marketing campaigns in this tough economy:

1) Narrow Vendor Base: Work with vendors who can provide you with end to end services, all under one roof. You will experience overall cost saving, get your message and product to market faster, reduce vendor “touches” (outsourced finishing services) and do away with unnecessary transportation or courier costs (better for the environment, too). Additionally, and this is a big one – the time, cost and stress saved by reducing the number of vendors and contacts to manage, cut down on communications and contractual traffic, etc., is immeasurable.

2) Collaboration: The most successful campaign executions are those that start with bringing together the “brains” – of all the partners; client, creative agency and printer (who has end to end capabilities in print, kitting, fulfillment, direct mail or web solutions associated with the campaign, all under one roof, see tip #1). Seriously. Do this. It works. Get the core group into a room and throw stuff on a whiteboard. This is the surest way to get creative juices flowing, help flesh out what the message is, who your audience is and how you can maximize your reach. It’s also a great way to address manufacturability and timeline questions. Most importantly, it’s fun and really helps to build solid relationships with the folks you rely on for your campaign’s (and your) success!

3) Multi-touch, multi-channel campaigns work!: Direct mail + social media (text, email + social networks) = over the top results. Don’t take my word for it – check out results from this case study:

“Tapping into the herd mentality” – How Chick-fil-A used the power of direct mail and social media to start a stampede.

Distribution: 5,048 postcards combined with social media sharing resulted in 14,000 people visiting the campaign site in a 2 month period. Resulting in…

279.8% visit rate

• 7.9% were responses to the postcards
• 63.3% were responses to the social sharing
• 26.8% were responses to the direct sharing (handing out postcards at events, etc)

120.6% response/conversion rate

• 22% with the postcards
• 24.8% with viral responses

4) Targeted Audience: Okay, I know that you’re probably thinking “duh!” – but I’m talking really targeted, highly personalized. Make sure your messaging or offer is relevant to that individual. What do they want to hear? What will incent them to respond? What will keep them coming back? Oh, and always make sure you use clean lists. Data hygiene is critical – make sure that your vendor is providing NCOA & CASS services for every campaign, for every “touch”. Clean lists equal a lower percentage of returned mail (wasted postage)!

5)Follow-up: This really isn’t just about making sure that you follow through with your offers and promises. Although, if you don’t, then, well – you just blew your campaign. But no, it’s not just about that. It’s about really diving deep into the ROI analysis. Did you get the results you were after? What worked best/least? Who responded and why? How can you keep the momentum of a successful campaign or program going? Refer back to tip #2.

I’m sharing these tips with you because, well, I’m a giver. I’ve been fortunate enough to see these tips in action in some really successful, really fun campaigns. That’s not to say that the journey has not been without folly…but that’s how we learn, right? I love this topic, so I invite you to comment or write to me at cestby@kpcorp.com – I’d love to hear from you!

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