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As another year closes, it's time to reassess your marketing and improve your workflows. What worked and what didn't? How has your industry evolved, and what does that look like for your marketing team? Is there a new channel you'd like to try? Is now the time to test it?
You must look at your workflow processes to stretch your marketing budget further in 2023. Knowing which areas of your marketing strategy require your attention will help optimize your upcoming campaigns. With this understanding, you can streamline your marketing efforts to create a seamless customer experience and benefit from higher conversion rates.
Here are some suggestions as you prepare for the year ahead. Let's get started!
Triggers are the magic behind marketing automation, acting as the key to achieving a supercharged ROI. Some examples include filling out a form, viewing a webpage, or abandoning a cart. These events trigger a response to deliver a relevant message or personalized offer at the right moment. This approach will help drive engagement and boost revenue.
As you reflect on the past year, focus on how you have used triggers to achieve your goals. If your triggers don't yield the results you hoped for, ask yourself the following:
Many companies have set up email triggers, but this is not your only option. Learn more about using marketing automation triggers to send direct mail. Campaigns can be created in less than an hour, helping you increase your ROI potential by 300%.
Learn more: 2022 The State of Direct Mail
Have you played around with several channels? If so, have you done testing? Taking this step is crucial when aiming to optimize campaigns. For example, have you tested the outcomes of direct mail vs. email campaigns to improve your marketing strategy?
The key to any successful omnichannel campaign is understanding which channel to use and when. It doesn't necessarily need to be one or the other. Focus on how one channel amplifies another. Email marketing likely plays a vital role in your marketing strategy. However, not everyone responds to email, which is why direct mail is so effective.
For example, direct mail open rates can be as high as 90%, yielding a 13x higher base response rate than email. However, 91% of consumers check their emails at least once daily, making it an excellent channel for targeted messaging.
To test the effectiveness of your campaigns and improve marketing strategy, you have several options, including these six A/B testing strategies. Leverage the data you have, regardless of what channel you're testing, using that valuable information to pivot where needed.
Learn more: How Do You Choose Between Direct Mail and Email
Understanding trigger marketing and how to test your channels is one thing but nailing the process of how your marketing messages go out the door is another.
Although newer channels offer marketing plans competitive energy and have a place in many strategies, older channels, including Google, Facebook, and direct mail, tend to be more effective. The goal is to recognize which channels work best for you, focusing on how your messages are delivered to ensure they land.
For example, the average person receives 88 emails a day and is potentially bombarded with thousands of social media posts. How do you cut through the noise and generate leads?
In the coming months, be open to experimenting with different formats, visuals, and messages based on segmented audiences, focusing on the delivery method. For example, digital ads may help boost brand awareness, but with a response rate of just 1%, you'll want to harness other channels when creating lead generation campaigns.
Also, how effective are your current processes? If your campaigns aren't converting, is it possible that messages aren't being delivered at the right time? Or is it the messaging itself that needs to be adjusted? If you're struggling with conversions, invest in the power of marketing automation, implementing what you've learned about your triggers.
One area that can often impact marketing workflows is the creative or design elements. You can’t send out automated emails without the right images in place, nor can you send out automated direct mail without images on your mailers. Same goes for social media campaigns, retargeting ads, print advertising, and so on.
Now is the perfect time to work with your design team to ensure the current process for design requests is working for both teams and getting a jump start on any new creative assets you’ll need in the new year.
Another area of your marketing workflow to clean up this holiday season is your analytics and reporting processes. Do you have a streamlined process in place to collate your data, look at the trends, and understand what the data is trying to tell you? Do you have regular meetings with your wider team to discuss what went well and what could be improved after each campaign concludes? These discussions can help you iterate and improve your marketing workflows year-round instead of waiting for the end-of-year slump to make changes.
Recommended reading: The Modern Marketer's Guide to Direct Mail Analytics & Testing
If you want to improve your marketing workflows by adding direct mail to your current list of channels, Lob is the only automation platform that transforms direct mail into intelligent mail.
Ready to see where direct mail fits into your omnichannel strategy and how to get started? Sign up with Lob.
