Get personal with your audience
Every one of us is bombarded with new offers and ‘reasons’ to switch our suppliers every day. The winners in today’s marketing circles are those that are able to build a long term relationship with their partners and customers. It’s about creating dialogue.
But it doesn’t have to be difficult.
STEP 1: LET’S GET PERSONAL
I wouldn’t open a letter addressed to ‘To whom it may concern’ – it’s failed at the first hurdle. If they don’t know who I am, it’s unlikely that I’m going to be interested in their offering.
To cut through that clutter, marketers need to show in an instant that they’ve considered the recipient when putting a communication together, even to get their attention.
Economies in digital print mean that you can afford to tailor your direct mail pieces to make them all the more relevant for each recipient – personalising the messaging, graphics and event details, etc.
By further personalising the call to actions on your DMs and emails with a unique url such as www.getmoremargin.com/jamescollis, you instantly create an added level of intrigue. This has shown to boost response rates considerably – but it doesn’t stop there.
STEP 2: GOING BEYOND THE GIMMICK
The personalisation of graphics and urls grabs attention – it’s a bit of fun. But marketers could be missing a trick if they don’t exploit the real opportunities behind the technology.
SmartURL enables you to tailor the landing pages with the content and messaging that resonates best with your audience – for maximum impact.
If you know what product your customer last bought, their preferred reseller or how long it’s been since they last spoke to you, you can easily reflect this in the messaging and imagery that appears on their landing page.
If you’re inviting a key customer to a seminar, why not use their postcode to pull in a map from their office to your event. You know who they are so there’s no need for a registration form. Confirmation of their attendance, dietary requirements or a request for a call back can all be done at the click of a button.
STEP 3: NOW WE’RE TALKING!
By taking the steps to make your audience feel special – be it your channel partners, prospective or existing customers – you gain valuable mind share. Through real-time reporting, you can also see which areas of the site each recipient visited and what actions they took, enabling you to follow up in the most appropriate way.
And this is where the dialogue really begins.
The more you can get your audience to engage with you, the more knowledge you can gain about their preferences in return, and the greater your ability to build a more valuable, lasting relationship with them.
See how Emulex used SmartURL to boost response rates in the ‘Get More Margin’ campaign
