In the beginning there was direct mail, and that was enough…

Actually direct mail – and the ever-evolving direct marketing – wasn’t there at the very beginning. The earliest identifiable piece of direct marketing comes from about 1000 BC. It was an ad for the return of a runaway slave and is now in the British Museum. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the response rate was.

What we consider “modern” direct mail really started with the introduction of penny postage stamps in 1863 and the invention of the typewriter in 1867. It has been reported that in 1891, the National Cash Register Co. (NCR) sent 4 million pieces of direct mail to generate qualified business leads for his sales staff. Now, THAT’s a pretty substantial start to an industry when you consider that the entire population of the US was about 76 million people in 1900.

Here we are almost 120 years later and every day, every consumer is bombarded with thousands of marketing messages – in the mail, on the TV, on the radio, online, on the cell phone, via SMS… By combining multiple message deliveries across multiple media, we can cut through that clutter and speak directly to an “audience of one.”

Executing a cross-media campaign moves through a number of parallel and inter-related steps. Some are concurrent steps, some are consecutive steps; they all must occur in the right order to result in a successful campaign.

Let’s walk through this chart and talk about each step. While we’re assuming you are planning a direct mail piece with pURLs and a microsite, if you are planning an email distribution just replicate the activities for the mail list and postcard for personalized email and add another “swim lane” to the chart.

If you want to include direct email, direct mail, and a microsite – you will have 4 or 5 columns rather than 3. If you treat your email distribution list separate from your direct mail list, you need a separate flow for that file.

The key is to have the microsite up and running before the first postcard or email is delivered. Not a good thing to send your customers to a nonexistent website – they aren’t going to go back in a day or two to see what they missed!

Creative Brief (A)
The creative brief lays out the entire campaign; your objectives, your audience, the message, the medium, the calendar, and the budget. You should be thinking about “what does success look like?” and describing it in detail.

The creative brief should be approved by all parties involved. In other words, you’re all on the same page from the beginning.

Each element of the campaign – the mailing list(s), the direct mail piece, and the microsite – have their own steps and checks. As you walk through these you will see multiple QA and approval points.

Mail List (B)
Direct mail or email lists come from a variety of sources. You may have a database of customers and prospects kept in programs like Salesforce.com or you may have rented one or more outside lists.

At the same time you will want to create a “seed list.” While the term originally referred to names added to a mailing list to ensure the list wasn’t misused, they can also be names used to monitor delivery of the email and/or direct mail pieces.

If you are doing promotional mailings, it is advisable to include the sales staff in your seed list, they should see what the prospects are receiving.

Merge your lists and remove all duplicates; then for mailing, run your lists through CASS-certified postal software. With that application, you will get standardized addresses with the proper codes needed to generate the USPS barcodes needed for postage discounts and better mail delivery.

This is the first QA point for the mailing list. Make sure all the information looks correct by taking a sampling of the list. Checking the shortest and longest first or last name field will help you tell if a field is blank (shortest) or if the data in a field has been truncated. If you have either of these problems – go back to square one and fix your data!

pURLs – personal URLs – are generally created by choosing a domain or sub-domain name and appending a first and last name to it. Some systems put the name information before the domain and some after. There are also systems that will add a number to the name information if the record has been used before to create a pURL.

Now, check again. This is not the time to have your list get scrambled! The worst thing that can happen is to have the name, address, and/or pURL get out of sequence. For as long as the computer has been used to manage customer data, the occasional direct mailing has gone out scrambled.

At this point your mailing list is ready to be married up with the direct mail piece template into which your data will be “poured.”

Postcard (C)
Designs for direct mail postcards have three elements: the graphic design, the content, and the business rules that will control how the personal elements of each piece will be displayed and printed.

Business rules for variable data may include phrases like this: If the gender field is “F,” then use the picture of the woman, if the gender field is “not F,” then use the picture of the man. Or you may have a rule that says, “If the state field is “FL,” then use the text that refers to “air conditioning.”

Business rules can be simple or complex; they are simply instructions as to which images or text will be merged into the template you will be using.

You may have a “job jacket” or “project folder” to manage the postcard production process. Regardless of your system, creation of the template into which your variable data will be merged is the next step.

Proofing or a QA check needs to be completed before you go any further to ensure the end result will be what you expected. You may want to sample a number of merged documents.

Once the template is completed and the business rules work the way you expect them to, the mailing list and the postcard template are merged and the documents printed and mailed.

Microsite (D)
The steps for creation of the microsite are the same as those for creating a postcard or email, after all your microsite contains all the same elements: design, content, business rules, and data.

Proofing or a QA check of all the elements of the website are as critical as the proofing of your postcard or email. Ensure that the business rules behave as you expect, that the names and text all fit the spaces allowed, and all links are active.

One of the best ways to make sure your website will be ready for the first response is to have it complete before your postcards are mailed. Murphy’s Law can delay even the best planned microsite and you have wasted all your effort if you aren’t ready to “catch” your responses.

Note also that it is nearly impossible to know exactly when mail pieces will be delivered. You may plan on 1-3 days for distribution and discover that it takes 5-7, or vice versa. Be prepared and record response by city and/or state for ongoing campaigns to plot your unique distribution patterns.

Success!
The purpose of your campaign may be to generate leads, to register attendees for an event, to collect survey data, or to sell products. Regardless of the end result, be prepared to process your responses quickly.

Distribute leads to the sales staff for immediate attention. Send automated “thank you” emails to registrants or survey responses. Fulfill purchases quickly.

And, close the loop by adding the names to your customer database for future cross media campaigns.

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