Essential Reading for Marketing & Business ProfessionalsThursday May 8th 2008Insights in this issue:
* Are you Agile enough?
* When the Direct Mail experts get it wrong:-
* Accessible Marketing

Dear Tim,

This week we're looking closely at how to
make sure your marketing can handle the
likely strains we're all going to face over
the coming months. We've got three great
articles for you and a superb free report for
you to download. Over the coming months we'll
be focusing on how to get more from your
budget so make sure you keep an eye on your
in-box - it might just save you a small
fortune

James Pearson - Editor

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Are you Agile enough?

With doom and gloom pervading the media and
sales in every sector looking shaky, how are
you going to ensure you marketing budget can
survive the inevitable cuts that are coming?
At MI we've been helping marketing
departments to become more agile, to do more
with less. In fact we've helped over 30
companies in the last twelve months improve
their marketing agility.

We've written a comprehensive guide on how to
become an agile marketer. You can download
this from our website, with our compliments
by clicking on the link below. It's packed
full of useful information and advice and we
think makes essential reading in these
challenging times.

Click here to download our Free Guide

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When the Direct Mail experts get it wrong:-

The IDMF took place last week and was,
according to several exhibitors I spoke to "a
little disappointing". Perhaps there's a
reason. In the weeks before the show I had
two tranches of Direct Mail entreating me to
register for the show. Unfortunately each
time they sent SIX mailers, and each time 5
of the addressees don't work for my company
and haven't done for years.
You'd kind of hope that the promoters of the
IDMF would be encouraging "best practice" -
but obviously not as far as the mailing list
is concerned. We ALWAYS advise clients to do
a telephone audit of any list BEFORE mailing
it - just to check that it is reasonably
current. It costs little, takes no time and
does highlight poor lists - like the one IDMF
used!

Cut your DM costs by 40%

There are two really simple tricks the IDMF
should have implemented. The first is to ONLY
mail the most recent contacts (no more than
24 months old) on their database and
certainly NO MORE than two in any site. Of
course they could get more sophisticated and
add SIC and size data to their database and
mail more contacts in larger organisations.
The second is to make the web registration
process more integrated with the Direct Mail.
This can be done by printing a simple code in
the mailer that the recipient types in to
activate their registration. In our
experience, doing both increases the net
response rate on Direct Mail by up to 40%.

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Accessible Marketing

"If you can't read this print please
call.." even those of us with 20/20
vision have had those moments where we try
and work out if the miniscule scrawl on the
bottom of a website, leaflet, poster or such
like is a) important or b) (if your eyesight
is that bad) even in a language you
recognise. Me, I see the humour in it I am
afraid.. if you "can't read the print"
because its too small, logic shouts you won't
be able to read the number you're supposed to
call to get the damn thing in larger print!
Other things that have me in fits are genius
accessibility statements like "If you do not
speak English, for more information please
call.." Will they have someone for every
language? I think not!

On a serious note, accessibility in marketing
is one of my bug bears, as a woman with less
than fit for purpose ears.. ! So I
understand the irritation felt when marketing
strategies don't cater for people with access
issues or cater ineffectively for them. My
heart sings when I read the words "For our
deaf and hard of hearing customers we are
able to provide information." And sinks when
I read "in tape format." Lets face it Audio
tapes for the deaf? Not clever, is it?

Why bother doing anything? Well in these more
challenging markets can you afford to ignore
the 365,000 every year who according to RNIB
start to lose their sight? Or the 9 million
people in the UK according to RNID who are
deaf or hard of hearing? That's a lot of
people not to bother marketing to, and the
most common reason companies give for not
making materials accessible is that its too
expensive. But, believe me we have a lot of
money to spend and we want you to have it,
especially if you become one of the very few
that does it well!