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Social Media Allied With Direct Mail Delivers Marketing Wins

May 26, 2019/in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Creative, CRM, Direct Mail, Direct Mail Lists, geo-targeting, Omnichannel, Profiling, Prospecting, QR, Response Analytics, Segmentation, Social Media Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Social Sharing, Targeting, Testing /by David Kanter

Social media and traditional “snail mail” may come from the different digital and print realms, but they are a marketing odd couple that work well together. Successful integration of social media and direct mail can deliver improved response rates, customer insights, creative testing, targeting and branding. And AccuList makes it easier for clients by offering services to help match Facebook and other social media with direct mail lists. Here are just a few strategies for combining social and mail marketing:

Mail Lists Build Social Reach and Social Builds Mail Lists

Facebook, the biggest consumer social media platform with more than 2 billion users a month, actively encourages marketers to upload direct mailing lists for matching against user information in order to run hyper-targeted paid social ads. Plus, Facebook ads can drive prospects to a landing page that offers an incentive to capture a physical mailing address in order to build up mailing lists.

Social Geo-targeting Can Help Tailor Mail Geo-targeting

Before prospecting in a specific geographic area with a costly mailing to target zip codes, try inexpensive research using social media. Send a promotion to a social media platform’s users in targeted zip codes and review the analytics to see which areas responded to which messages most favorably and then tailor direct mail list and creative. Facebook and Twitter allow targeting by location as well as demographics and interests for consumers, while LinkedIn can be used to target business prospects by location.

Social Analytics Enhance Direct Mail Targeting and Creative

Social apps and ad analytics provide marketers with demographics, interests, and response data for insights into target consumer and business audiences. Those insights can be applied to mailing list segmentation and targeting selections to increase direct mail response. Plus, social media ad creative can be tested and tracked to see which messages and images perform best with which audience segments, with the results used to inform the messages and images used in physical mailers. Finally, marketers can merge social insights and data from social media profiles with CRM and marketing automation to craft direct mail triggers and to create personalized mail content.

Use Cross-Channel Pollination to Help a Campaign Bloom

Cross-promote on social media and direct mail to marry social media’s ability to generate engagement and excitement with mail’s ability to deliver personalized, lasting, tangible information. Of course, the creative and offer should mirror each other in both channels for consistent branding. For example, marketers can pump a product launch on social media and then mail brochures when product hits stores. Vice versa, direct mail pieces can include social icons and QR codes linked to a social page to recruit social media followers or promote social sharing incentives to increase direct mail campaign momentum. Of course, before rollout, it’s a good idea to try a direct mail split test to those who received a social media (say Facebook) teaser and those who did not in order to tailor the wider campaign. For more ideas, check this recent NextPage blog post.

Is Your Fundraising Plan Ready for 2019 Challenges?

January 9, 2019/in B2C Marketing, Creative, Data Management, Data Privacy, Digital Marketing, Direct Mail, E-mail Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing Forecast, Marketing Technology, Nonprofit Marketing, Online Giving, personalization, Segmentation, Social Media Marketing, Social Sharing, Targeting, Uncategorized, Video Marketing /by David Kanter

As nonprofit marketers make final tweaks to fundraising plans for 2019, AccuList USA can support its nonprofit clients with a brief survey of some of this year’s top trends as identified by fundraising pros.

Story-telling, Personalization, Video

NonProfit PRO magazine cites three general 2019 trends that will affect both traditional direct mail and digital fundraising via e-mail, mobile, social media and website. Nonprofits should include a commitment to story-telling in this year’s fundraising communications, the magazine urges. Stories create an emotional connection to the mission and are remembered better than facts, studies show. However, gathering the best stories relies on more than marketers; it requires a story-telling culture that pulls from across the organization, NonProfit PRO stresses. That culture requires leadership buy-in; a mechanism to regularly encourage and gather stories; a story-banking method, from database to manilla folder; and a way to regularly and consistently communicate stories via newsletter, website, social media page, etc. “Personalization” is another marketing mantra for 2019, with success requiring clean up-to-date data and list segmentation to craft targeted messages for direct mail and e-mail. Anyone doubting that response is significantly improved by personalization, even in the crowded digital space, should consider this Hubspot finding: 39% of marketers who segment e-mail lists have a higher open rate, and 28% experience lower unsubscribe rates. Finally, put that targeted story-telling into a video format to maximize results. In 2019, video is projected to represent 80% of Internet traffic. Nonprofits that embrace video will be able to take advantage of the proven facts that people remember videos better than written content and share them more often for viral reach. Luckily, the cost of video production is going down and online tools are readily available, the magazine assures.

Digital Technology Supports Strategy Changes

Meanwhile, the Nonprofit Tech for Good blog identifies some key digital trends to include in 2019 fundraising plans: 1) increased use of marketing automation software to create personalized appeals and individualized pathways and engagement with the general mission and specific programs; 2) more focus on a recurring-gift donor base and commitment to engagement strategies and technologies that nurture donors; 3) more relevant, personalized, contextual messaging based on data technologies; and 4) more disruption by commercial social media players like Facebook via removal of fundraising fees, matching funds and direct access to donor data and AI.

Opportunities & Risks, From Instagram to Data Privacy

The TrueSense Marketing blog came up with a whopping “21 Fundraising Trends and Best Practices You Need to Know in 2019″ from a survey of fundraising pros. We’ll only cite a few here, starting with a prediction that the visually oriented Instagram, which hit 1 billion monthly active users in 2018, including the 50-64 and 65+ age cohorts, will become a more popular platform for nonprofits in 2019. Another prediction is that, with data breaches continuing to grab headlines and a patchwork of data privacy regulations at the state level (such as California Consumer Privacy Act passed last summer), nonprofits will face added costs and changes in data collection and storage policies this year. Finally, one 2019 response to the demand for contextual communications cited above is more experimentation with native social media advertising, meaning ads in a post format in the social feed of followers. Native social media ads are more engaging than traditional advertising, cost less and can produce better results, per fundraising users. For more, see https://www.truesense.com/blog/fundraising-trends-best-practices-2019

Harness These 2019 Trends to Boost Social Media ROI

January 2, 2019/in AI, Apps, Brand Marketing, Content Marketing, CPM, Data Privacy, Influencer Marketing, Interactivity, Lead Generation, Marketing Technology, personalization, Real-time Marketing, ROI, Social Media Marketing, Social Sharing, Uncategorized, Video Marketing /by David Kanter

As social media marketing competition rises, organic reach dwindles and social ROI gets tougher, AccuList USA clients will need to hone their social media marketing data, targeting and creative strategies. Here are just a few big social media trends to include in planning for next year, based on analysis by Hootsuite and Social Media Today.

A Need to Re-build Trust and Transparency

Trust in social networks has declined. Edelman’s “2018 Trust Barometer” found that 60% of respondents no longer trust social media companies, and Facebook is among the hardest-hit, thanks to headlines about its role in 2016 presidential election interference, ongoing “fake news” abuses, and security breaches compromising user data, reports Hootsuite. Twitter has its own trust problems because of the use of bots and fake accounts. As a result, Hootsuite sees brands focusing less on maximizing reach and more on “transparent, quality engagement.” Instead of posting the same content across multiple platforms, marketers are more likely to favor context-specific and audience-specific messaging that reaches smaller but more valuable groups in 2019. The need to balance privacy demands with personalized treatment is also leading marketers to be more open about when and why data is collected and then to use only willingly shared information to create personalized one-to-one experiences and unique value offers. Yet personalization still drives success despite privacy issues. Social Media Today (SMT) reports that up to 96% of marketers surveyed believe personalization advances customer relationships.

Micro-Influencers Replace Celebrity Influencers

As the number of social media influencers has grown over time, prices for their services have climbed, and, at the same time, trust in celebrity influencers has declined, both Hootsuite and SMT report. One solution is to increase use of experts and employee advocates over celebrity influencers, notes Hootsuite. Meanwhile, SMT suggests more micro-influencer marketing. As opposed to major influencers, micro-influencers exist in every marketing niche. While they have followings of fewer than 10,000 people, most of the micro-influencers’ followers are genuinely interested in what they have to say. Since micro-influencers are not massively targeted by advertisers, they also are seen as trustworthy and down-to-earth, notes SMT.

Stories Format Challenges New Feed Use

Hootsuite predicts that “the news feed may be slowly becoming a thing of the past,” as social media users increasingly prefer content in a stories format. Certainly, the stories format has exploded on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp–and is even being tested by LinkedIn. In fact, Hootsuite cites a recent finding by consulting firm Block Party that sharing via that method is growing 15 times faster than feed-based sharing. One way marketers can ride the trend is to push intimate, less polished content in a stories format, suggests Hootsuite, although the company acknowledges that the stories format’s intimacy and spontaneity do not fit with all brands.

ROI Gets Tougher, But Shopping Gets Easier

Social marketers who rely mainly on organic reach are behind the curve. The pay-to-play era is here and driving larger social ad budgets, Hootsuite notes, with “The CMO Survey” reporting a 32% increase in social budgets in 2018 alone. As the price tag for social ads rises, along with competition for audience, ROI is getting tougher. Hootsuite can cite the most recent “Internet Trends Report” from Mary Meeker, which found that while click-through rates on Facebook are up 61%, CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) have soared 112%. But good ROI is still attainable, especially as the gaps between social media and commerce narrow. For example, Meeker’s 2018 report also showed that 55% of survey respondents have purchased products online after social media discovery. Shopping is being made easier by technologies such as in-stream payment tools and video plugins along with social media special features such as shoppable posts, Instagram’s Explore shopping tab, Facebook Marketplace and Pinterest’s Buyable Pins. Video is especially effective in social ads, with a study by video marketing company BrightCove showing that 74% of respondents cited a connection between watching a social video and making a purchase.

Growing Real-Time Messaging and Listening

Messaging applications are becoming integral to social media business relationships. Hootsuite cites a survey from Twilio, which found that nine out of 10 respondents would like to use messaging apps to communicate with businesses. Plus a study by Facebook IQ finds that 61% of U.S. respondents used a messaging app to contact a business in the prior three months. The audience reach of messaging is undeniable. According to Meeker’s report, the top five messaging applications—WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Instagram and Twitter—total some 5 billion monthly users. However, there are challenges, warns Hootsuite, such as messaging scale and using artificial intelligence in a way that avoids privacy infringement and unsolicited communication. The next step, predicts SMT, is use of social listening (monitoring) to actively generate leads and facilitate social selling. Social listening is the act of crawling the web and social media platforms to find all mentions of a brand (or keywords) on social media platforms, blogs, forums and news sites. Monitoring tools such as Awario, Brand24, Mention, Brandwatch, and Hootsuite now are used mainly for customer service and reputation management, but a few brands are already monitoring to find leads, and some monitoring tools are introducing features for lead generation!

Smart Social Media Helps Boost Zoo & Museum Fundraising

August 7, 2018/in B2C Marketing, Digital Marketing, Engagement, Fundraising, Mobile Marketing, Museum & Zoo Marketing, Online Giving, Social Media Marketing, Social Sharing, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing /by Katherine Sharma

Social media is among the direct marketing tools that AccuList USA supports for its zoo and museum clients’ fundraising efforts. A recent blog post by digital marketing agency Search Influence offered some helpful tips.

Commit to Streamlined Digital Giving

For social media promotions, mobile outreach or online donation drives to work effectively, marketers must make digital giving as easy as possible with user-friendly platforms, forms and payment options. Search Influence cites three examples of success. The Boston Museum of Science raised over $1,200 from Facebook users alone, many of whom might not have contributed via traditional channels, by using the free-to-download FundRazr app. The app offers custom giving options, such as donations via credit card, debit card or PayPal, and the ability to choose to contribute anonymously or self-identify via Facebook profile. Meanwhile, Cameron Park Zoo launched a mobile giving campaign that encouraged zoo supporters and visitors to donate $5 or $10 through a simple text message to show support from home or say thanks after a great day at the zoo. Rosamond Gifford Zoo boosted its continuous Adopt an Animal program with a special two-day digital promotion to honor National Adoption Day. To reach a wider audience, the promotion offered a lower minimum donation requirement and a smaller, custom donation package. The brief effort not only earned an extra $350, it tapped those who normally might not donate.

Seek Ways to Leverage Visual Engagement

Social media works best as a visual engagement medium, which offers lots of opportunities for zoos (cute animals) and museums (special exhibits and events). Search Influence cites multiple examples of success live-streaming exhibits, such as a night-stream showing patrons what creatures are up to when the zoo or aquarium is closed, or a 24/7 feed of active and entertaining animals, such as monkeys. If a zoo animal is expecting, marketers can get the public involved by broadcasting the pregnancy, birth and early baby growth. Photographers can be great viral promoters for a zoo or museum. Ideas include social media-hosted fan photo contests or onsite-hosted photographer-only after-hours events. And there is always an opportunity to re-purpose great existing photos on social media with a share-worthy caption!

Read the full article for more tips.

Drive Response by Integrating Direct Mail and Social Sharing

June 20, 2018/in Acquisition, B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Case Study, Data Capture, Database Development, Digital2Direct, Direct Mail, Landing Page, Marketing Integration, Multi-Channel Marketing, Omnichannel, postcard, Social Media Marketing, Social Sharing, Uncategorized, Viral Marketing /by Katherine Sharma

AccuList USA began its life 20 years ago this June as a traditional direct mail list broker and manager but has adapted to marketing trends and client demands to become today’s omnichannel data and services provider–including social media marketing, of course. We’ve seen the response power of taking social media and direct mail from parallel tracks to integrated teamwork. For those who are scratching their heads over mail-social integration, we recommend a Target Marketing magazine article by Summer Gould, including two case studies as templates.

A Basic Formula for Success

Gould boils a successful mail-social marriage down to a simple formula: Use the power of social sharing to expand mail response. Basically, start with an existing direct mail campaign that is working well. Create landing pages for the target audience to visit and direct recipients to those pages in the mail piece. Ask the audience to provide the information that you want on the landing pages. Finally, to get your offer, ask people to share with others.

Addressing Key Plan Elements

Marketers don’t have to reinvent the wheel to get this done, but they do need to remember to include vital spokes! Gould starts with the basics: Define objectives and the target market. Then adjust direct mail design to include landing pages and social media sharing. Make sure that the offer is the same for both direct mail and social media, and be sure to effectively incentivize sharing. Focus carefully on data capture, including social media accounts so you can reward those who share the offer! Decide what other information you really want to collect to receive the offer. Finally, make sure you have the social media monitoring software to track results, as well as the direct mail response tracking.

Case Studies That Inspire Emulation

Gould’s article offers two case studies that should inspire emulation. First, Chick-fil-A, which wanted to both build its customer database and increase store traffic, launched a direct mail campaign of 5,000 plastic postcards that included social sharing. Thanks to the viral impact, the campaign gained a 279.8% response! Second, Stein Mart wanted to increase store redemption through a referral program. The discount retailer mailed 20,000 postcards with a social sharing component, and the campaign gained a total response of 150.58%. For links to the case studies for details, read the Target Marketing article.

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