Direct Mail and Social Media

Many marketers these days are trying to find the right balance between digitial channels and what I will call the "traditional" channels (direct mail in particular).  The proper mix depends on the specific offering and audience, requiring plenty of testing to find what works.  Marketers should include social media information along with direct mail (or print ad) efforts to notify the audience of their online presence.  A very small percentage of prospects typically respond immediately to direct mail campaigns.  This leaves a larger percentage of prospects who are interested, but can't respond right away for one reason or another.  These potential buyers are the ones that should be pushed to a marketer's social media efforts to stay in touch with the brand.

Invite this group of "will buy, but not right now" prospects to join a corporate Facebook page, follow the brand on Twitter or sign up for RSS news feeds on your website.  These potential buyers will continue to become familiar with the company's offering and expertise, hopefully, pushing them toward a purchase.

Another option is to consider using PURLs to boost response direct mail rates. A PURL (personalized URL) is a customized landing page for each mail piece recipient and can become your company’s custom entry site to an online relationship of frequent social contact and email.

By adding relevant data and PURLs to mail pieces, marketers can see response rates shoot up beyond the typical 2%.  Offering prospects a personalized URL allows marketers to track visits, collect additional data about interests, and direct them to new channels of communication.  Add links to the brand's social media accounts on the bottom of the personalized landing page. This will add legitimacy to a campaign and opens the door to a continued relationship.

When a prospect takes the effort to act from an offline direct mail piece to an online landing page form and then connects with the brand via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. a marketer is left with a very valuable potential customer.  These prospects have shown interest by taking action across channels.  This sequence of events is much more relevant to a brand than someone who liked a corporate Tweet and is now a follower or is simply a follower to stay current on the marketplace.

(Image: TN Media Solutions)

The Integration of SEO, SEM & Social Media

Recently I worked on a few SEO, SEM and Social Media projects providing me with the insight that these initiatives are all interdependent. Some organizations approach these online marketing activities separately and do not take a holistic approach, which will hinder their effectiveness. Brand awareness can be built through social media efforts and a subscriber base can be developed that is prone to share compelling information. Below are several insights for making SEO, SEM and Social Media work together to achieve online marketing success:


The published content that is shared will increase the amount of inbound links to the firm’s site. Search engines incorporate inbound links into their algorithms and earned organic links hold immense value.

Frequently publishing new content on the firm’s website and through social channels will help to drive more traffic from the search engines. People will continue to visit the site in anticipation of the new content and avoiding a static website increases the visits by search spiders leading to frequent indexing by the search engines.

Building a positive reputation through intelligent published content will build on itself over time. This requires the content to be compelling and fresh, which will lead to links and increasing attention.

Sustaining valuable content contributions to the community can eventually earn endorsement from community members with influence and build digital reputation.

Individuals looking for insightful content through social media channels show interest in finding the content and pose better odds of sharing it as well.

Enabling RSS syndication of content blogs on a firm’s website greatly increases the search engine indexing frequency and builds a subscriber base.

Website pages containing frequently published content need to be optimized so that the content can be found in search and drive traffic to the site. The content needs to be developed in a manner that search spiders accept and can index.

Incorporating valuable keywords into the social media content will enable the target audience to locate the content through search.


The relationship between Social Media and SEO/SEM is very strong and will continue to build. The keywords found in published content can help identify the content as being relevant to the social channel members as well as the search engines. SEO/SEM initiatives benefit from the content published for social media by providing targeted traffic to the website through much improved positions in search results pages.  Firms need to develop an online strategy thinking about how these three initiatives play off of eachother.  A great post about developing a roadmap for this strategy can be found on Mashable:  http://mashable.com/2009/04/15/social-media-seo/.

(Diagram courtesy of Sumolabs)

Marketers Adoption of Social Media

Over the past year we have seen a great deal of activity from companies in the social media space, with many dedicating human resources and larger budgets to these initiatives. Social media is not a fad that will go away over night and many experts believe it will continue to grow into an integral part of every individual’s online experience. This has many marketers, both B2B and B2C, scrambling to get into the action. Every marketing publication browsed these days includes headlines on social media marketing. Many state if you are not involved in it, you are way behind the times. Analysts are currently predicting that the money spent in the social media marketing segment will experience a thirty-four percent compounded annual growth rate over the next several years. Many state that these estimates are by no means aggressive and some agree that they are downright timid. This estimate bodes well for those providing services to social media marketers, however, it means that marketers are shifting budgets from traditional direct to this new segment (along with other digital practice areas). This graph and chart (provided by Forrester Research) depict the estimated growth in social:

As can be seen, many companies are moving into digital and social media marketing efforts. It should be noted that to be successful with social media a company must alter some key fundamentals of branding and marketing online. It requires businesses to grasp the concept of entering into a two-way conversation with customers through multiple channels, rather than one-way communication through traditional marketing tools such as print advertising. Businesses can benefit from a carefully designed social media strategy, starting with the understanding that companies and their products are already being discussed online. Marketers need to monitor and participate in these discussions along with building trust among existing and prospective customers. There are numerous resources available to help design and execute a social media strategy as well as providing valuable tips to navigating the social media world. Social Media Examiner offers excellent information to help marketers get started:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/getting-started/


Many marketing initiatives are currently complementing the old-school marketing mix with an aspect of social media. Traditional marketing as we know it will never completely go away, but many new digital initiatives will be implemented to drive top-line growth.

(Cartoon credit to: Silicon Cloud)