Non-Line Blogging

I was recently asked at short notice to stand in for a speaker on Mobile Marketing at the Central and Eastern Europe Digital Marketing Conference in Budapest.  As luck would have it, the speaker's table had a bottle of Pepsi on it and gave me an extra 10 minutes worth of content.  On the bottle label was a QR Code and so I talked enthusiastically about how this technology can drive traffic to web sites for free.

In short, a QR code can hold a huge amount of information but all most of us need it to do is carry a url.  Then, anybody with a smart phone that has the software installed can take a picture of the code and open up our destination site.  Cost of creation of QR Code?  Nothing.  Cost of printing on label?  Nothing. Value of free traffic to your site? Priceless!

I've been following the development of QR codes for several years and whilst they are big in Japan, they do not really seem to have caught on in Western marketing culture...until this morning.  There I am, munching on my super-food muesli flicking through the daily paper and out pops a full page display ad with...a QR Code!  

To be honest, I'm not wildly excited about what Siemens has to say about "Climate Change and Energy Supply", but they did take me from an off-line display ad to a mobile web site in seconds, for no effort.  I'm also just a little more engaged.  And I think Siemens is a bit cooler than before thanks to my multi-channel customer journey (how sad am I?)

So, what are the opportunities for QR codes?  Well, they should probably augment all ad copy that currently just has a url...why ask people to go to a long site address when you can whisk them there in seconds by mobile? That means we can deliver them to deep url's and not just easy to remember/type urls. 

How about store windows taking people to a "Voucher download" page?  Or they should be on all direct mail collateral. And packaging, and exhibition stands...and posters.  Business cards?  Company Cars?!

Then there is the art and science of building landing pages;  how can we harvest personal data from the visit?  What should be the call to action? How do we measure success?  In truth, the volumes from this activity will not be overwhelming, but for the tech savvy segment of your prospect pool this may be cool enough (and easy enough) to tip them over into becoming customers. 

So, we've a long way to go with QR Codes, but what an exciting journey.   And for those of you wanting to play with me in the land of QR, here is all you need to begin:

• Create your QR Code web url - it's free and easy at this site
• Or if you want a Vcard - Nokia have a jolly clever tool for that (accept their T's and C's before use)
• Scan it using QR Code smart phones - here is Nokia's range
• Or download the software

That's it - just to get you started, here's my QR Business card.  And just for the record, even I'm not geeky or sad enough to have my Facebook url printed on a T-shirt, but if that's your bag, this company will do that for you.  Happy QR Coding!  

Here are a few thoughts about "Non-Line Marketing" that I pulled together with Chris Combemale, my Co-Founder of The Email Academy... 

As these difficult trading conditions continue many organisations are looking at ways to reduce their direct marketing costs without adversely affecting sales. One quick win has been trying to migrate customers from expensive off-line channels to cheaper on-line ones; speaking to people through email, at about half a pence a message, is a more attractive than saying the same thing through direct mail at maybe fifty pence a message. This cost-differential (email is 100 times cheaper than direct mail) means that email is a much more forgiving medium - your conversion rates could be half as good through email but still be 50 times better off in terms of cost per sale!

However, there is a business risk involved in this channel migration. If you ask people to “tune out” of nasty, expensive, un-green direct mail then you put pressure on your email marketing to perform. In my experience over the past decade across Europe there are very few client companies that have optimised their email marketing strategy and execution to make this risky channel migration pay. So I was delighted to read a case study from Marketing Sherpa today that suggests some steps all companies can take to reduce risk AND increase sales.

To summarise, an independent travel agent encouraged people to opt into their email programme to reduce the costs of servicing customers – all good so far! But in order to stimulate sales they decided to run a multi-channel campaign. With some simple data appending on their prospect file (adding life-stage and income variables is easy if you have a post-code), they selected the most affluent prospects for the campaign, as well as targeting all existing customers. They then used a combination of direct mail and email to promote personalised offers, with a range of on and off-line calls to action.

Here is the personalised post-card, with a "reminder" of the previous transaction in the heading.

And here is the email message, with the same "reminder" of previously-enjoyed holidays... 

 
Now here’s the good stuff...

“The team noticed that those who received both the print and email communications were twice as likely to visit their personalized web pages.

- 6% of those who received only email visited their webpage
- 12% of those who received both email and direct mail visited their webpage

That doubling in response also translated to twice the conversion rate and twice the revenue from customers who received both communications, as opposed to customers who only received one communication.”

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31299

The conclusion for me is clear. Our customers live in a multi-channel world and as marketers we need to embrace “non-line marketing”...using channel-neutral planning to harness all direct channels to engage with people. Humble direct mail can be used to re-enforce on-line messages and drive prospects to web sites in much the same way that email can be used to drive footfall to physical stores. And when we use both these channels in well-planned, targeted campaigns we enjoy conversion rates far beyond that which each channel achieves on its own. That’s heartening news for the direct marketing industry!

Many marketers work in a multi-channel world because their customers use different channels to engage with them.  One of the biggest challenges is tracking the off-line to on-line marketing experience; getting people to go on-line is not hard as we can shout "visit our website" in our ads and give them the web address.  But how successful are those campaigns, and how do we attribute on-line success to off-line campaigns?

One option is to create "vanity urls" that we expect people to remember and then type correctly, never mind just googling (or Binging?) the company and campaign key words.  The result is that many successful outcomes will end up being attributed to Mr Google simly because people can't be bothered to type things into address bars any more! If you want a comprehensive run-down of all the multi-channel tracking options then Avinash Kaushik has several posts that cover it admirably.

Here are a couple of examples from the world of retail.  

One quick (old and quaint?) way is to simply stick up a poster and ask people to email somebody.  It ticks most of the registration boxes...its quick, uses universally accessed media and has a simple "value exchange".  You could have different email addresses for regions of retailers, or for different incentives and there is no marginal cost of acquiring a new contact. Its easy to measure the success of these tactics and develop better versions over time. Maybe texting in your email address to a short-code number could tap into a medium that people may hold in their pocket/handbags rather than relying on people jotting down an email address on a scrap of paper and finding it when they got home.

However, Facebook has muscled it's way onto my High Street (Reigate, Surrey, England) with an altogether more robust proposition.  A clothes retailer has created a Facebook group (free, takes 10 minutes), has built a simple value proposition (20% off if you join our group), and now has the chance to push people back in store AND develop a longer term relationship.  In these difficult recessionary times I applaud any retailer who is brave and smart enough to look at exploiting a multi-channel relationship. And with the lovely people at Facebook still blasting out emails to your group members for free, its a pretty cost-efficient way to beat the credit-crunch.  

The digital winds of change have blown most cruelly through the offices of travel agents in the past decade.  The sad truth is that we do not need to wander down into a busy high street and watch somebody dressed up as an air steward using a computer to type in our preferred holiday details...we can do that at home (the searching, not the dressing up as air stewards). So the travel industry has become a barometer for what conditions will hit other business sectors, and here's an interesting development...

In TravelMole today it was announced that the two biggest brochure publishers "are being forced to merge because of the dramatic fall in the number of brochure packs and high street travel agents".  In the face of adversity Paul Markland, MD of the publisher BP said “Let’s be upbeat – travel agents and brochures are a valuable part of the holiday sales chain and will be for a long time to come.”  Well, yes and no...

In some decisions you may need old media to help you, and holidays is probably one of those.  So lets say that we are excited about a camping holiday but need to sit down with the family and agree where to go.  Sounds like a job for the Eurocamp web site to me.

Off we go to the web-site, big button in primary navigation is what I'm after and it takes me to a registration page.  

In a couple of clicks we can choose what bits of the brochure to download and after parting with an email address we have a personalised PDF brochure.  Not only that, Eurocamp have my contact details and can link that to the preferences I selected from the brochure page.  We win - we have a brochure to help us choose where to go.  They win - qualified lead that can be chased by email.

So the man from BP was right, and brochures are going to be part of the holiday sales chain for many years to come.  But it won't involve going into a travel agent, or getting a thick paper brochure, or bringing home hundreds of pages you'll never ever to look at...which is why his demand for brochures has dropped from 12 million to 7 million in 5 years along with a 25% decline in Travel Agents