Anderson Marketing Blog

My former English teacher, Miss Thorne, would kill me if she read this, but the rules of grammar are not etched in stone.

You should be using campaign-specific landing pages if your customers are accessing you online by:

When was the last time you launched a direct marketing effort with the goal of generating a 0% response? (Nope, that’s not a typo. There is no digit missing in front of the zero. We’re talking zip. Zilch. Nada.)

Twenty-five years ago it was hard to move words around. If you wanted to publish anything you had to submit your work to a battery of editors, who hemmed and hawed over 1,000 other submissions before deciding whether yours was worthy enough.

As Robin Williams once said, “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” This sentiment is especially true in advertising. As any Creative Director will tell you: Every word matters when there is so little space and time to get a message across. And when advertising to Hispanics, one challenge is: Do you need original copywriting? Or is translating an effective option? What’s the difference? A copywriter writes copy. A translator translates words. Translating just the words may not be enough because it doesn’t always translate (pun intended) into good copy.

It’s easy to see the importance of external communications in creating a potential client’s first impression; however, internal communications are just as important. Consistent and effective internal communication builds a highly organized and driven workforce and creates internal brand champions by connecting your employees to the brand they represent. Here are four ways you can get started perfecting your internal communications.

1. Be a trendsetter, not a follower.

As direct marketers, we’re on a constant quest for reliable intel to help make each new campaign more effective than the last.  Response rates.  Offer.   Mailer format.  Contact frequency.   These are just a few of the many reporting elements we slice, dice and obsess over to try and move the proverbial needle.

Even the best marketing creative geniuses need a roadmap to point them in the right direction. In order to develop the most effective marketing materials that are spot on for your audience, your creative team needs the proper direction.

As we all know, lists, targeting, segmentation, modeling, etc. are one of the most important components of a direct marketing program.  Through years (OK, decades) of testing, I’ve come to realize that in nearly every client program there is a significant opportunity to improve results through the use of multiple data sources.  The roots of this strategy trace back to the nonprofit industry, where organizations regularly rent multiple third-party lists for donation appeals in addition to their house file of past donors.  These third-party lists are closely analyzed based on number of donations, average donation amount and total amount of donations.  Underperforming lists are quickly eliminated from the campaign and new lists are constantly tested against the best performing list.