Achieving Online And Offline Marketing Synergy

Achieving Online And Offline Marketing Synergy

Synergy is when two or more things cooperate or interact to produce a combined effect greater than the simple sum of their parts. Often in a company’s marketing efforts, there are so many moving parts, or "irons in the fire," that its marketing strategy may feel disconnected or even scattered. But there IS a way for a company’s marketing tactics to work in concert to achieve synergistic results - better than each tactic working in isolation. It begins with companies (nationally, and locally in Tampa) aligning their digital marketing with their direct mail efforts.

Digital Marketing 101

By now, most everyone knows the importance, and benefits, of online marketing for their organization, brand, or company. The internet age has redefined modern marketing to include all forms of digital marketing for Tampa companies: email or digital marketing mailers, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, remarketing, content marketing (articles and blogging), and last, but certainly not least, social media marketing.

Whether a small company is just doing the bare minimum with their digital marketing, or a huge multinational corporation is pursuing a rigorous, highly-strategized and flawlessly-execute digital marketing strategy, all organizations MUST have a digital presence these days. With the number of consumers relying on digital devices like phones, computers, and tablets to do their searching, researching and shopping, companies can’t afford not to market digitally.

At the very least, all businesses should have a website. But a website doesn’t do much good unless efforts are taken to drive traffic to the website. This is where a digital marketing solutions company in Tampa comes in, to provide data-driven strategies and execution for a company’s online marketing needs.

Digital Marketing Mailers

One important strategy in any company’s online marketing efforts is email, also known as digital marketing mailers. Tampa businesses who want to catch their subscribers’ eye with these marketing emails would do well to invest in having them professionally designed. Yes, a business can put together their own email promotion or newsletter in Constant Contact or MailChimp, but to really achieve a cohesive, branded look and to include content that marries well with all their other online and offline marketing efforts, it’s best to hire a digital marketing firm.

Using a reputable marketing firm can help a business better target their emails to segmented groups of customers (based on those customers’ behaviors or characteristics), improve their emails’ open rate, and create really engaging content that will encourage customers to answer the email’s call to action (CTA), improving click-through rates and, ultimately, sales. Further, they can help the business build their opt-in customer email list with various strategies (like asking for a customer’s email address on the business’s website in exchange for a coupon) to allow the business to communicate their message to an even broader audience.

Is Direct Mail Still Viable?

Some businesses may be wondering in this day and age of the internet and ubiquitous mobile devices: is direct mail still effective? In short, yes. Direct mail still grabs the consumer’s attention and offers very good conversion rates for businesses such as retail, restaurants and those in the service industry.

A firm that offers direct mail services in Tampa can assist clients with a variety of successful direct mail methods - from menu mailers (for restaurants) to tri-fold mailers and paper or plastic postcards. Plastic postcards, in particular, offer a weight and texture that grabs customers’ attention, as well as multiple options for sizes and special features like pop-off gift cards,reusable punch cards, and key tags.

Direct mail also offers the added benefit of reaching new potential customers outside of a business’s current mailing list. One way of doing this is by mailing to every mailbox in a zip code or a particular geographic area. Another way is to rent a targeted mailing list from a direct mail services or mail list firm that allows the business to select only households with certain demographics or behaviors that make them more likely to respond to the mailed offer.

The Synergy Between Digital And Direct Mail Marketing

So, both digital and direct mail marketing can return great results for a company, but how can a company’s online and offline marketing efforts work together to achieve synergistic results? It begins with a cohesive strategy where what is being done digitally works hand-in-hand with direct mail efforts to boost the ROI of both.

Two examples of this marketing synergy are when companies utilize direct mail retargeting(remarketing) and geofencing marketing.

Direct Mail Remarketing

Most people are familiar with the term "remarketing" when it comes to an online setting: online ads are targeted to a consumer based on their previous internet actions. For example, a consumer searches for an item or service, or visits a page of a company’s website but then exits before taking any action. Minutes, hours or days later, they are presented with an online ad for that very item, service, or company that they searched or visited.

But remarketing doesn’t just work online; there is also direct mail remarketing for Tampa companies who want to marry their online and offline marketing strategies. It’s the very same concept as digital remarketing, except in this case, a mailpiece - flyer, letter, postcard or other direct mail offer - is mailed to the consumer who’s taken some action on the internet. For example, a woman searches online for local gyms she might like to join, and a few days later in the mail, a postcard arrives in her mailbox from a neighborhood gym with a new membership offer, waiving the sign-up fees. The gym has used her IP address or a cookie from her website visit to find her mailing address, and follow up her action online with direct mail remarketing.

Geofencing Marketing

The second example of coordinating digital and direct mail marketing is geofencing. Geofencing allows a retail or service business to set up an invisible boundary (usually around their location or their competitors’ locations) and show their banner ads on the smartphones of people who enter those areas. The ads are timely, targeted, and usually include some kind of offer. Now imagine reinforcing that online ad with a direct mailpiece to that same consumer a few days later. A direct mail services company in Tampa can match the geofenced customers to their home addresses, and a direct mail offer can arrive in their mailbox in as little as 2 days, keeping that business’s brand front-of-mind.

These are just some of the ways digital and direct mail marketing can combine to create results greater than either method could achieve alone. Finding a reliable marketing solutions company can help any business boost their sales with a cohesive strategy that combines online and offline marketing efforts.

Ricky is a graduate of computer science engineering, a writer and marketing consultant. he continues to study on Nano technology and its resulting benefits to achieving almost there.