Why should email marketing and DM be viewed as two different things?
I agree (see the link to the article below) that information overload is a problem online, but so is all the trash DMs that’s piling up in the physical mailbox.
I think its time we expanded the term DM – Direct Mail – from just meaning “with your name and address printed on it” – to be about relevance. And yes the article has some great examples of that being done. The use of loyalty card data (buyer behaviour) and Neuromarketing (maybe not fully utilized yet) will give you a lot of information.
But I think the case of First Direct is a good one, where they tried to build a direct connection with the customers by asking questions. I believe that as long as you can explain how answering the questions will benefit you as a user with information you actually want, your response rate will be pretty good.
The challenge mentioned; to keep data up to date could be handled with an online system, maybe even a “my page” solution where customers could change their preferences when they needed to.
What I think the article misses by looking at DM and digital as two different things is that it’s all DM but in different distribution channels. And by using on strategy and two channels many of the challenges could be solved.
Love, Hate & Marketing 