MEDIA & MARKETING: Using email and direct mail in tandem will help get your message across, say marketers

THE RED carpet was rolled out last week at the annual An Post Direct Marketing Awards, and while the champagne flowed and the band played into the wee hours, the fizz was not quite what it was in the heydays of the boom when the round room of the Mansion House in Dublin would have been packed.

Having won agency of the year five years in a row, RMG Target did not enter this year’s awards. Instead, this year’s big winner was Acorn Marketing, which garnered 15 awards including six golds and five silvers as well as agency of the year. Other winners included Chilli Pepper Marketing, Tequila, Ogilvy One and Javelin Direct.

An Post has been the main sponsor of the DM awards for many years, but with postal volumes falling, it was not lost on An Post executives that it is digital, and not print, which is increasingly at the centre of direct marketing strategies.

According to Amie Peters, head of direct mail in An Post: “We talk about digital a lot because I think marketers are carried away with all the new things that happen online and the scope that digital offers. We call it the land of ‘or’, where marketers talk about direct mail or e-mail. We are trying to change that by getting marketers to talk about ‘and’. When direct mail and digital are used together, the results can be quite powerful. Marketers have a fear of being left behind but digital and social media is still quite unproven.”

Emmet McCaughey of Acorn Marketing acknowledges that e-mail has now become a vital part of every direct response campaign. “The game has changed because there are now so many different ways to get to people. If you give people a lot of different ways to respond, they will respond. E-mail will always give you scale so it’s very cost-effective and an integral part of all campaigns.”

Knowing when to send the e-mail to maximise the response is very important. According to McCaughey, Tuesday morning is the optimum time. “What usually works best is a teaser campaign which is sent out by e-mail followed by a direct marketing piece sent by post and a phone call to finish up. But there is absolutely no loyalty to any medium. If it stops working, people will stop using it. It’s as simple as that.”

Tequila’s managing director Edel McCabe believes the direct marketing sector is going through a digital revolution.

“Ten years ago direct marketing was just direct mail but now digital provides massive opportunities for tailored specific direct contact with customers.”

The agency won plaudits for its campaign to launch the Audi A1. Instead of buying a list of target customers from a mailing house, Tequila created its own database.

Says McCabe: “When we were planning the Audi campaign, our target demographic was 20- to 30-year-olds. We created a community of them by inviting them to join in a game to win a new car. They had come to us so they were interested in receiving communication from us and that’s the game changer. Being able to create your own audience by community and by interest means you don’t have to buy lists, which are often poor anyway.”

But McCabe is still a fan of postal direct mail for her client ESB, which posts a customer magazine to all its customers every second month along with their energy bill. Meanwhile ESB’s online billing customers are e-mailed an ezine (an electronic magazine) with completely different content.

“Every six weeks we measure what parts of the ezine customers are clicking on and we tailor the message accordingly for the next bulletin. There is still a place for postal direct mail but we need to push the creative boundaries.”

The migration to digital techniques may be accelerating but direct mail can still play an important marketing function, according to Geoff McGrath, managing director of RMG Target.

“There has been an undeniable shift towards digital in the direct marketing sector,” says McGrath. “But that’s how it is across all the advertising mediums. The mistake most people are making is that they see digital as a replacement for post. The most successful strategies we have put in place are the ones that include a tangible piece of mail and digital.”

McGrath says the challenge for An Post and the direct marketing sector is to demonstrate the medium’s unique role. “The challenge is not to be defensive about digital and make sure it is not an either-or conversation.”

Leanne Papaioannou of Chilli Pepper Marketing says a lot of marketers think they should be replacing direct mail with digital marketing – but what they should be focusing on is using the two in tandem.