To uncover the potential that direct mail holds in grabbing attention in today’s digital world, B2B Marketing magazine has put together a best practice guide with hints and tips from a group of experts - including our Head of Data Strategy Matt Hanks.

1. Best Practice Guide
Published November 2013
b2bmarketing.net
Direct Mail

2. b2bmarketing.net
Targeting
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Best Practice: Infographic © B2B Marketing 2013

3. SECTION 3 Targeting
b2bmarketing.net
MATT HANKS
HEAD OF DATA STRATEGY
THE MARKETING PRACTICE
S
ome people believe printed direct mail
has had its day – that it is an expansive
luxury compared to the modern
communication channels of email, social media
and online demand generation. And in some
respects you can understand that argument as
a relatively small investment reduces the risk,
but it fails to recognise a simple truism – digital
communications alone can be rather impersonal
and thereby ineffective.
What they can lack is cut through, and that is
the key quality of any communication activity.
We live in a digital world where almost constant
interaction with the internet is the norm and it’s
not uncommon for businesses to receive over
100 emails per day. In those circumstances can
we really be sure our messages both reach and
engage with our target audiences in the most
meaningful way? I think not.
That’s why I believe printed direct mail still has a
significant role to play in modern marketing. I’m
not suggesting it should always be employed in a
standalone fashion, my argument is that printed
direct mail can be the most impactful tool in an
integrated multi-media campaign, where each
carefully coordinated touchpoint supports and
reinforces the core message.
With less direct mail being employed, just think
how much more effective and impactful an
intelligently conceived direct mail piece can
be, particularly if the competition is looking
to communicate ‘smarter’ by just using low
cost emails.
But as with all marketing communications, the
most important task is to define the audience for
the product/service at the outset, and ensure that
the campaign database is targeted very precisely
to reach the appropriate decision makers.
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013
3.1 Analysis and insight
Nobody wants to spend more than they need on
a marketing communications project, particularly
if printed direct mail is part of the campaign
strategy. A lot of money can be wasted printing
and mailing collateral to the wrong people. It
is better to send out 500 mailers to the right
audience than 10,000 to an undefined universe.
A sound targeting strategy has to be backed
up by evidence that includes research and
data analysis. The post-rationalisation and
interpretation of previous campaign activity is
also important.
And in that spirit don’t ever be afraid to test
alternative strategies as part of a marketing
campaign – communicating with a ‘potential
prospect’ database as part of your main activity.
No markets remain static, so exploring all the
possibilities can be hugely illuminating if you
want to learn as much as you can about your
audience. Adopting this policy can unearth some
extraordinarily important marketing intelligence
that can help you and your client be even more
effective in future campaigns.
Having access to an existing customer and/or
prospect database can be a sensible starting
point, as you can derive some useful insights as
to which messages have had the greatest impact
and which market sectors have performed well
in the past. Which in turn can help you predict
what might happen in the future.
That of course assumes all market variables (price,
availability, competitor activity, technological
developments, etc) remain unchanged, but
that’s never the case. All markets tend to be in a
constant state of flux. Therefore, anything your
planning department can share with you about
what is happening now and might happen in the
near future in the chosen market can mean the
difference between a moderately successful
and a killer campaign.
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4. b2bmarketing.net
“If your data is not
up-to-date, accurate and
fit for purpose all the effort,
hard work and budget is
going to be wasted”
36
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013

5. SECTION 3 Targeting
Digging deeper to find out how your offer/
proposition might resonate with your ‘assumed’
audience and understanding the operating
model of your target organisations will add
further depth to your planning. You also need
a firm understanding of the psyche of the
individuals you are targeting: what is their day
like? What pressures are they under? What’s
on their agenda? What is likely to grab their
attention? Are they looking for inspiration, likeminded experts or an ally?
Conducting some preliminary development work
will prove extremely beneficial in the long run.
My usual list of questions is as follows:
•
Understanding the marketplace – what are
the realistic business objectives, products,
propositions, how does the competition behave
and what are the marketing requirements?
• arket sizing and opportunity mapping –
M
what is the true size of the potential market?
Where have the successes been to date?
Using external statistics provided by Forrester
or the Office of National Statistics, can help
you find any gaps that need to be plugged.
•
Current data analysis – how can we exploit
your current data asset to maximise its
potential? Reviewing elements such as
age, quality, depth, coverage and content is
always useful.
•
Exisiting contact analysis – as well as
analysing your data population at account
level, we should review the types of contacts
we already hold. Finding out where you
have had traction in the past, and what a
good client/lead looks like can help guide
us towards contacts and accounts that
have the greatest potential for conversion.
•
Profiling – having an in-depth view of a
specific account or contact can help build a
more personal, comprehensive picture of the
audience, allowing for a more personalised
approach tailored to individuals’ interests,
achievements, roles and past affiliations.
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013
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•
Target audience – what job roles and
functions do we really need to target?
Who are the decision-makers, advocates
and influencers?
•
Legality – do you have the right data to use for
direct mail and do you have the permissions
to use this data for marketing purposes?
3.2 Data planning
Having built my career around marketing data
and analysis I am unashamedly biased but, for
me, data management plays the critical role in
any direct marketing programme. You can have
the best offer and the most exciting creative
work, but if you don’t send it to the right people
it’s going to be a disaster for all concerned. But
clients sometimes misunderstand the value of
data, especially in terms of time resources and
budget allocation.
If your data is not up-to-date, accurate and fit for
purpose all the effort, hard work and budget is
going to be wasted.
Consider the following when developing your
data approach:
3.2.1 Business landscape
Targeting small office or home office
(SoHo) SMB or enterprise business sectors
can be very different and each present
their own peculiar data planning and
building challenges.
There are over 1.5 million SoHo businesses in
the UK, so approaching this audience needs
very careful segmentation to focus budget in
the right areas. You will only need to find one,
maybe two, key contacts, and due to the size of
the universe should expect a higher percentage
of wastage and returns. B2B data decays at
an average of three per cent per month, so if
you target 100,000 contacts in any month you
can easily expect 3000 returns (more often
than not it can be higher, but it depends on the
quality of the data you are using). Unless you
have a bottomless pit of money, using direct
mail to target the entire SoHo base is normally
37

6. b2bmarketing.net
“Contacting 10 contacts
in some direct mail
campaigns isn’t lazy,
it’s smart”
38
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013

7. b2bmarketing.net
SECTION 3 Targeting
out of the question. So making sure you have
done your research and focus on only those
segments with the biggest opportunity is key.
When targeting larger businesses with direct mail
the emphasis should shift to getting to the right
contacts. Don’t limit your targeting opportunities to
a single decision-maker. Think big and explore the
decision-making unit – the influencers, the coach,
the gatekeeper. We have targeted over 10 contacts
in some direct mail campaigns. That’s not being
lazy, that’s being smart. We have also adopted
techniques where we send PAs an initial direct mail
piece that ‘pre-empts’ the main communication to
the executive they are look after.
Of course, in the B2B world we are all familiar
with the term high-value direct marketing (HVDM),
particularly in ABM campaigns. The temptation is
to be as creative as possible to deliver higher
impact (and often higher budget) collateral, to
let the audience know we care. But making sure
the data is 100 per cent bang on for this type
of campaign is more than critical; at £100 per
contact we can’t afford to be sending HVDM
collateral to the incorrect contact. Personally,
I’m a firm believer in doing everything possible
to make sure the HVDM hits the intended
recipient. Sometimes you only have one chance
to impress.
3.2.2 Personalisation
It is very rare to see B2B direct marketing
collateral without any form of personalisation
these days. Where once it was exciting and
new it has now become the norm. A level of
expectation has been set among direct mail
recipients. And the steady increase in the use of
QR codes to link through to online media is also
supporting/reinforcing integrated campaigns.
• the data formatted in a way to allow as
Is
close to 100 per cent delivery as possible?
• the names and addresses of the contacts
Are
you are targeting formatted to a level that
will achieve a high delivery rate, and not
get thrown in the bin if a job title or name is
incorrectly presented?
•
Balance brand reputation with quality
of data – bad personalisation will
certainly have a negative impact on your
campaign performance.
3.2.3 Segmentation
I could write for hours on different segmentation
approaches and the vast array of segmentation
strategies I have come across, but that would
be painful for us both. Your analysis, research
and insight should have already helped you with
your messaging, and in turn helped you decide
how to segment your data. The B2B world will
more than likely contain the following:
• Customer or prospect
• Big or small customers – up-sell and
cross-sell?
•
Drive repeat purchases and/or increase
customer value.
• Hot or cold prospects?
• Sector/vertical
• Opportunities in specialist areas?
• Growth sector?
• Looking to grow in to new markets?
• Turnover
• Size
• Growth/decline account
So, asking the following questions about how
you want to personalise your direct mail will help
shape your strategy:
•
What level of personalisation are you hoping
to deliver through your direct mail?
• Special attributes
• Contract end dates for specific products.
• Geo-demographics
•
Location (e.g. where is the contact based
and will they travel far to an event?)
• Does your data support this?
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013
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8. b2bmarketing.net
“If a contact receives the
same item multiple times
it will demonstrate a lack
of intelligence, damaging
brand perception”
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Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013

9. SECTION 3 Targeting
3.3 Data management
Direct mail production and distribution relies
heavily on data management. If I think back to
the start of my career at Brann; we were the
biggest mailing house in the UK at the time with
some huge clients that sent millions of items
through the post each year. During my time
there, the business grew from a simple print
and production process to offer data bureau,
analytics, planning and creative services – the
combination of all those disciplines under one
roof was a relatively new thing back then.
Large volumes of direct mail needed large
volumes of data, and in turn huge amounts of
data processing power and programming skills
just to ensure the letters went out the door
on schedule. But technology has changed
everything. I would now hazard a guess that
all print/mailing houses also offer some form of
data management service. However, volumes
are much smaller and more targeted and the
level of sophistication has increased, so a more
intelligent of way of producing and managing
direct mail and data is required.
Here is a list of direct mail data considerations:
•
De-duplication – direct mail is expensive
so make sure your data is clean. Over and
above the costs, if a contact received the
same item multiple times it will demonstrate
a lack of intelligence and can be damaging to
brand perception.
•
Suppression screening – there are a whole
host of suppression files available to B2B
marketers to ensure you are not wasting time
and money on sending direct mail to incorrect
contacts. These include:
• Corporate mail prefernce service.
• Business suppression file.
• Business changes file.
• Euro suppression file.
•
Verification – do you need to verify
your current data set and/or acquire
build contacts?
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013
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•
Technical considerations – how will you
maintain the quality and accuracy of your
database? Could direct mail be integrated
into your marketing automation programme?
What is the customer journey and how does
the direct mail support this? And importantly,
how will you measure and report ROI from
your direct mail activity?
•
Formatting your data correctly – including
name and address shuffling, do all addresses
fit on the label/in the window, casing of
address elements (town and postcode upper
case as best practice).
3.4 Data legislation
Legislation is always a hot topic, thanks to
the ever increasing amount of data held about
us all. The law may be more focused on the
world of B2C marketing, but B2B marketers
need to be increasingly aware of the rules and
regulations around the use of contact data for
marketing purposes.
When sitting in meetings with client teams I
often find myself raising the data security and
legislation questions. I guess it is my bag being
the data expert, but it does surprise me that
marketing plans are often put in place with only
a cursory nod to this important consideration.
A successful marketing programme is usually
a secure and law abiding one – one that takes
into account the applicable rules and regulations
correctly. There are some hefty fines if you fail
to store, secure and manage your data correctly,
so it’s important you get it right. Therefore, your
direct mail data strategy should include a large
section on how to adhere to the rules.
In fact, part of the analysis and up-front data
planning work should focus on the current data
assets, looking at how the data has previously
been used, when and how was it collected, and
whether it was collected with the relevant optin permissions. If you are acquiring new data
then always use a reputable data provider. If
you are planning a degree of data capture in
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10. b2bmarketing.net
“Intricate company
structures and constantly
changing contacts makes
getting to the right
decision maker tricky”
42
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013

11. SECTION 3 Targeting
your campaign, or the call to action requires the
contact to submit some information, then you
will need to consider how this is collected and
stored, how you communicate this, and how the
marketing permissions should be built into the
data-capture processes.
However, if applied well, the rules and regulations
can help refine and enhance your direct mail
campaign. For example, if you are asking the
recipient to respond to some kind of form, be
that online or offline, then, pre-populating it
with some of the contacts information you
already have is always appreciated. Not only
does it demonstrate a level of sophistication
and personalisation on your part, but it allows
the recipient to focus on providing the data you
actually want to collect.
There is also a lot of talk about the introduction
of the new EU Cookie law and the impact it
might have on direct marketing – particularly
for marketing automation (MA) vendors, some
of whom rely on cookie-based techniques to
collect valuable online behavioural data. I have
seen a number of techniques applied, ranging
from overt pop-ups asking for permission to
apply a cookie, to the issue being covered in the
small print of the terms and conditions.
As a new piece of legislation, it is still open to
interpretation, and until the dust has settled we
will struggle to know the best application of it.
My gut feel is that it will be somewhere between
these two extremes, and certainly MA vendors
don’t seem too worried. I read an article recently
that stated only 20 per cent of site visitors will
opt-in to allowing cookies – and this was seen
as a negative point. However, 20 per cent are
showing a high level of engagement and it is
therefore extremely valuable.
3.5 Tools and techniques
When building a data asset it is important
to ensure you get it right from the start and
then invest time and energy into maintenance
to ensure it is kept up-to-date. Apart from the
unnecessary cost of marketing to contacts
that have left the company (albeit there’s an
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013
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argument that someone will have replaced them,
so it may not be wasted – but I can’t remember
ever opening a DM or taking a call meant for
someone else) it can also damage your branding.
Getting the data right from the get-go will
obviously improve your chances of campaign
success. Data quality can decay at the rate of
three per cent per month, so building a process
to a) get your data asset in the best place
possible before you get into live campaigning,
and b) ensure you have a process to continually
refresh and maintain your data, is crucial. The
B2B world moves at an incredible pace, so you
need a regular process of updating your contacts
and applying the appropriate suppressions
(CTPS, MPS, contact permissions etc.) to adhere
to data protection laws.
Having worked with consumer data in the past,
the tools and techniques applied are sometimes
seen as being more advanced than in the B2B
space. While I would agree the sheer volume
of data in the B2C world means you need to
be clever with your data strategy, it doesn’t
really mean it’s more advanced. In the B2B
environment we face different challenges
and managing data can be more complex.
Intricate company structures and constantly
changing contacts makes getting to the
right decision-maker or influencer very tricky.
Techniques such as the single customer or
prospect view (which the consumer market
do very well) can create group, company,
department and influencer views that can all
be linked to deliver a valuable data set that can
help educate and influence. But this is often
difficult, with numerous data sets being held
disparately. For example, marketing, finance,
and sales all have their own data, which
causes fragmentation – a big problem if you
want to develop a truly integrated data and
marketing strategy that has the best chance of
generating leads.
To support any direct marketing activity, you
need a solid platform on which to store your
data. You might use legacy tools, an off the shelf
CRM system, something you’ve built internally
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12. b2bmarketing.net
“Often the person you
really want to engage with
trusts the PA’s judgement,
so will take your content
seriously if it’s been
allowed through”
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13. b2bmarketing.net
SECTION 3 Targeting
or additional tools that can be integrated to
enhance what you already have. Products such
as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics provide
platforms at a reasonable price, giving users the
ability to update, maintain and access data in
real-time and also provide extensive reporting
and integration options. However, you need
pretty strict rules and regulations on data input
using these types of systems. Experience
tells me that if you plan on using your data for
direct mail, CRM systems provide challenges
and more often that not, a good deal of work is
required to format the data for direct mail once
the data has been extracted from any system.
CRM solutions have been adapted in order
to implement a single customer view (SCV)
from within, using increasingly intelligent datagathering and integration techniques. Software
such as Salesforce is widely used and is
continually evolving to integrate with new data
collection channels and digital data (Radian6
and Eloqua are now fairly simple to integrate
technically). We know that getting to a true SCV
is and always will be challenging, but these
tools are extremely useful in getting as close
as possible to the perfect data set. Employing
the right technology and proper planning
can significantly reduce the risks involved
in improving customer and prospect views.
Furthermore, with these CRM database tools
being cloud-based, they allow real-time response
and interaction with the target audience.
Over and above the general data management
there are some great tools that allow you to
engineer, segment and analyse your data.
Products like SAS, SPSS, SmartFocus (now
part of Emailvision), and Faststats are a few
examples. As for managing data for direct mail in
particular, there are products and services from
the likes of The Software Bureau that specialises
in data processing for mailing and also applying
the necessary suppression screening elements.
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013
3.6 Getting past the gatekeeper
This isn’t much of an issue when targeting the
small office/home office, or even SMB audience,
but for larger enterprise level organisations
getting hold of the most appropriate senior level
decision-maker is one of the biggest challenges
of all. The contact/targeting strategy is just as
important as reaching the individual themselves,
as is making sure the data is correct. The
C-level strategy (and some D-level) is about
befriending the PA, which I touched on earlier.
If budget allows, a great way to address this
task is to conduct some pre-calling to obtain
the relevant PA’s name and then adapting
your targeting approach to recognise their
gatekeeping role. The PA often acts as the
filter, so ‘warming them up’ can certainly help
the process. Often the person you really want
to engage with trusts the PA’s judgement, so
will take your content seriously if it has been
allowed through the net.
3.7 Summary
• successful targeting strategy uses
A
a collective/collaborative approach. The
insight, data, relevance of the message and
stand out creative need to come together to
create an experience for the recipient of DM –
you want them to pass it on to colleagues to
say ‘what a smart bit of marketing’.
• is expensive. However, you will get a
DM
better ROI if you research a defined target
audience, source and build the right data to
align to this, understand the audiences’ needs
and get their attention through compelling,
thought-provoking messaging, offers and
appropriate creative.
•
The call-to-action is critical and often
where the ROI is won or lost. The call-toaction should offer the recipient something
of value they think they will benefit from e.g.
a ‘free hour’ of consultancy, which plays to
their need to be better informed, go online to
download a paper, etc.
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14. b2bmarketing.net
“Enterprise targeting equals
low volume of accounts but
is more about the breath of
contacts and the clever way
of engaging with influencers”
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15. SECTION 3 Targeting
•
Accurate, quality data is crucial. You need
to know the DM is going to get to the intended
recipient to minimise wastage and to ensure
the budget works as hard as possible. Also, if
you have created a fantastic DM that will blow
the recipient away, but the letter or package
is delivered with incorrect name, job titles etc.
the immediate reaction can be negative and
you run the risk of the DM being discarded.
The quality of your data is more than likely
to be the first thing a recipient will see, so if
this is not right all your targeting, creative and
messaging work could be for nothing.
b2bmarketing.net
•
Getting past the gatekeeper. For a C-level
strategy it’s often all about befriending the PA.
The contact strategy is equally important as
reaching the individual themselves, and precalling can often be the brightest thing to do.
• Segmentation. Depending on your audience
the level of analysis and segmentation
required to support your targeting approach
varies: SME audience equals lots of volume, so
an in-depth understanding of your customers
and prospects will shape the segmentation
and testing strategy (marketing automation
can play a big role here). Enterprise targeting
equals low volume of accounts but is
more about the breadth of contacts and
the clever way of engaging with all of the
decision makers and influencers, it’s a more
complex approach.
Best Practice: Direct Mail © B2B Marketing 2013
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Tel. +44 (0) 20 7438 1370
Fax +44 (0) 20 7438 1377
info@b2bmarketing.net
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