Protect your business

28/05/2008

In light of the current credit crunch, businesses could be tempted to reduce their marketing spend in a bid to save money, perceiving it to be a low priority and an avoidable expense. However Fiona McCormick, director of Perspektiv, warns companies not to be too hasty in cutting their marketing budgets as less exposure could limit new business opportunities and could even contribute to the loss of existing business. The key is ensuring that you get the highest return on investment from your marketing spend.

"A well planned direct mail campaign is an easy and measurable way to increase a company’s profile and stimulate a response,” said McCormick. “However, to ensure the campaign is cost effective, it is essential that they are adequately tailored to the people they are sent to. Failure to do so means your direct mail could be viewed as junk mail and simply thrown away or, even worse, have a damaging effect on the company’s reputation.

Everyone gets bombarded by junk mail and there is nothing more annoying than receiving a letter about a service or product that is totally irrelevant to you. Those companies that take the trouble to tailor their campaigns to each recipient are going to achieve a much higher response rate and therefore have a greater chance of increasing the level in business.

It is not uncommon now to receive something in the post featuring your own name for instance a personalised birthday card but in fact it can be much more sophisticated than that. By analysing the data held on customers, you can take into account characteristics such as age, gender, location, interests and purchasing habits and develop mailings tailored to that particular individual. People are much more receptive if they receive something that matches their own personal characteristics and it is therefore more effective.

Although the unit cost of highly targeted, personalised mailings is more than for the blanket approach, the actual return on investment can be a lot higher as the response rate from such campaigns is much greater. Using a customised rather than just personalised approach, we have, on a number of occasions, secured response rates of between 25% and 50% for our clients, which is much higher than is generally achieved. With the current economic climate every penny counts, so this must be an important consideration.”

Perspektiv is one of the leading direct marketing groups in the country with the skills and resources to create customised direct marketing campaigns as well as the sophisticated digital equipment in house to print and mail them.