New technology is making mail & digital work harder
Philip Ricketts, head of door to door strategy, sales and marketing, Royal Mail, says marketers who don’t embrace new technologies that drive value from their mail and online campaigns risk being left behind…
New technology, such as digital watermarking, is making mail and digital routes work even harder in delivering brand engagement and sales.
The introduction of new technologies, such as apps for phones and QR codes, mean that the way consumers interact with brands is changing.
It is these technologies that are opening up a wealth of opportunities for the savvy marketer to keep ahead of the competition. Indeed, evolving technology can aid marketers in a variety of ways, from improving their targeting of prospects, to aiding customer engagement and evaluating campaigns.
Of course it is hard for marketers to keep up to speed on the plethora of new technologies that can help them with their marketing efforts. However, those they should be looking out for are ones that successfully operate across more than one media route. After all, the power of integrated campaigns has been well documented, which makes it equally important that they use technology that maximises campaigns across different media.
Successfully combining the strengths of post and online is something we are committed to with the recent launch of interactive mail. Launched by our Door to Door unit, it uses digital watermarking technology to enable consumers to simply scan an image in their post with their 3G phone to be taken to a company’s online content – a website, video or Facebook page – in seconds. It could be a video of a chef preparing the consumer’s favourite meal or longed for holiday destination.
Without the need for bar codes or QR codes, the digital watermark can be easily embedded into the existing pictures on leaflets and mailings. No special inks or changes to the printing process are required, making it straightforward and very cost effective.
What has also made interactive post possible has been the increasing proliferation of 3G phones and apps that increase their functionality. Combined with their ease of use and the fact mobile phones are always close at hand, this technology is perfect for interacting with easily accessible mail and leaflets.
Traditionally, mail and digital have a strong heritage in working successfully together to deliver marketing campaigns with particularly high levels of interaction and response.
Mail, both addressed and unaddressed, aids digital campaigns because it is physical. In an increasingly digital age it is able to place messages directly into prospect’s hands. Basically, mail is a great media to generate stand out. Consumers can immediately consume and act on mail, or file to refer to and action at a later date.
Furthermore, mail offers a wealth of opportunities because it is very tactile and is the only media able to engage with consumers across all five senses – sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. It is worth remembering that there is no restriction on the size and shape of posted communications.
Arguably there is no better way to deliver stand out than by mail. This is confirmed by research that reveals 87% of consumers remember door drops – the most remembered of all marketing mediums.
So if you combine the strengths of mail – the fact it is a highly physical, tactile and creative communication – with some of the strengths of digital, which enables marketers to deliver highly personalised real time interaction with consumers, you have the potential to deliver a stand-out and responsive campaign.
Also bear in mind another reason mail and online routes work so well together is because social networkers are more likely to respond to mail. Recent research from TGI and BMRB found 34% of social networkers are more likely to be frequent responders to mail than the average UK adult. This is a surprising number given the widespread perception that people who use social media ‘live’ online. In fact the same research reveals that of the 17 million social network users in the UK, 8.2 million have responded to a mail campaign in the past year.
Technology is evolving fast, so new developments like digital watermarking are set to make mail and digital routes work even harder and more successfully together. Those marketers who don’t embrace new technologies that drive value from their mail and online campaigns risk being left behind.