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Advertising Tips from Fletcher Prince
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This year, as you make your marketing plans, I hope you are allocating money for advertising. While advertising may be the most expensive component in the marketing mix, it is often highly effective.
There are two upcoming opportunities to expand your knowledge about advertising opportunities in the DC area. One is the local ADDY awards, which will be presented by the DC Ad Club in mid-March. This is the perfect occasion to scout out the agencies that are producing award-winning work. The other is DC Ad Week, which will occur in mid-September. You have the opportunity to hear from nationally known experts in advertising at DC Ad Week, and learn about the latest trends and best practices.
Of course, David and I hope you will work with us this year. As you consider your advertising options, here are some “Do’s and Don’ts” to keep in mind . . .
DO
- Integrate your marketing, public relations, and social media campaigns to complement each other. We can help you plan your integrated campaign.
- Examine where your competitors are advertising, and the frequency.
- Invest in professional graphic design for display advertisements.
- Use cost-effective email marketing. It has the highest ROI on the dollar of all marketing channels, according to the Direct Marketing Association
- Email marketing: $40.56
- Internet, search: $22.24
- Internet, display: $19.72
- Social networking: $12.71
- Mobile: $10.51
- Catalog: $7.30
- General advertising: $5.24
- Use search engine advertising, especially if you have numerous competitors.
- Target workday commuters with drive-time radio spots and Metro bus/rail ads.
DON’T
- Skimp on advertising! This is the most common mistake we observe.
- Assume Twitter and Facebook updates can replace the results of paid advertising.
- Run small, lower-price ads in many outlets. Larger ads get noticed.
Effective Communications: for initial contact, don’t use email
It happened again, today. Someone got lazy and tried to use email to do a letter’s job.
This person had important information to relay to a small group of parents — me, included — under 100 people. It involved registration, attending a meeting and receiving specialized information, just for this group. She had never communicated with this group before, other than a brief meeting. She needed them to be in a specific place, at a specific time, and fill out forms.
She decided to go with an email communication. She did no other follow-up or other communication with the parents.
Not all the group members received her email (she was completely shocked by this), and missed out on important information regarding their children. Where did the communication break down? Not on my end. And now I’m steamed!
What you need to know about email deliverability
She and most people don’t know that up to 20% of email is never delivered to recipients. Bump that percentage up much higher if you’re using a commercial email service, emailing to school or government addresses, including some HTML in your email, or if you make certain kinds of errors.
And when I say 20% of the email is never delivered, I’m not saying “just to the inbox.” It doesn’t even make it to the spam folder. For the recipient, it never existed.
Don’t send email for initial communications, ever
For initial communications to new group members — communications containing important details, to ask for business, or to schedule meetings, email is not the way to go. You could send an email greeting to a group asking them to confirm that you have the correct address and to request them to add your email to your inbox.
For groups under 100, I would advise sending first class “snail” mail four weeks in advance of an event or needed action, and following up with phone calls a week or two later to make sure the information was received.
When To Use Email Communications
When you have established a contact list that you have confidence in, that is fully opt-in and accurate, and you have previously established communications in other ways, then you can move to email communications (however, you should supplement this with mail and phone calls).
The typical open rate of emails sent to a house list is nearly 20%, according to the Direct Marketing Association. Of those, for a sale or other desired commercial call to action, the response rate averages about 2%.
The emails we send for ourselves and for our clients average more around 40% to 50% because we use highly targeted and carefully managed contact lists.
Email is NOT for prospecting
What if you’re reaching out to new and potential clients? Should you use email communications?
Let me ask you something. If you were going to ask someone for a date for the first time, would you send them an email???
When it’s really important that you get someone to take action and you two don’t have “history,” you have to get a bit more personal.
Besides, it’s illegal. You can’t send commercial email to someone who has not specifically given you permission. If you are a nonprofit or government entity, you shouldn’t do it either, not without explicit permission.
Sometimes, you have to just pick up the phone
Like it or not, telephone calls and well-designed, first class mail are still the ways to go when it’s absolutely essential that people receive, process, and act on information they are receiving for the first time (or the first few times).
Stay tuned this week for more blog posts about how to make your communications more effective.
Related articles
- Why Aren’t Your Emails Making it to the Inbox? (marketingtechblog.com)
- A 7 Step Guide to Email Deliverability (hubspot.com)
