Blanket online direct marketing, on its own, is neither cost-effective nor sophisticated enough to engage today’s customers, argues The Think Tank’s Liam Bateman who will be speaking at
RIBA Insight's Consultancy Days in November.
It needs to be combined with other activities, on- and offline, to optimise your return on investment.
Direct marketing has gone through many changes in recent years with new online opportunities and more sophisticated segmentation of data. The boundaries are becoming blurred; what does direct marketing now include? How do the various digital channels impact on other marketing channels? Where does it cease to be one marketing technique and become direct marketing?
This blurring around the edges has become more extreme with the introduction of online relationship marketing, or social media marketing, which has now pulled public and media relations into the mix.
The importance of direct marketing has increased in the last two years as budgets have been squeezed and margins cut. Its targeted nature has provided levels of accountability and quantifiable return that other activities cannot match, and as a consequence has led many companies to switch from press advertising to communicating directly with existing and potential customers.
Online direct marketing presents many new opportunities, but is it cost effective? Businesses that switch to online marketing often do so because they perceive it to be less costly, with its promise of reduced print and mailing costs. Online direct marketing can be a better route to take when budgets are tight, however it’s less costly for a reason. Response rates from electronic direct marketing can be very low.
Online direct marketing serves a particular purpose and needs to be combined with other activities to optimise return on investment. Blanket direct marketing alone won’t engage customers used to being flooded with marketing messages. Multiple touch points, where your customers have the opportunity to interact with your brand and products, combined with strong messaging and a reason to believe, are essential in cutting through the fog of marketing activity. It is the suitability of media and message to your audience that is crucial to developing a good relationship with existing and potential customers, not putting all your eggs in one basket for budgetary purposes.
Combining and integrating marketing channels will have the greatest impact on coverage and response.
Liam Bateman will be discussing this, how social media marketing complicates matters and more at the RIBA Insight Consultancy Days in November. Click
here for more information.
Dulux's Let's Colour campaign has been extended by mural painter Matt W Moore ,creating a series of 'live painting performances' in Marseille, Lyon and Paris. Let's Colour launched in the spring and is a global campaign from Dulux/AkzoNobel based on a concept to stage events in different cities in which Dulux paint is used to brighten up a neighbourhoods thereby "adding colour to people's lives".
The winners of the Blueprint Awards at 100% Design have been announced. In a very competitive year the Best New Product award went to Nathalie Dewez for her piece Linea light and the Most Promising Talent at 100% Futures award was given to Daniel Emma Studio.
Blanket online direct marketing, on its own, is neither cost-effective nor sophisticated enough to engage today’s customers, argues The Think Tank’s Liam Bateman who will be speaking at RIBA Insight's Consultancy Days in November.
Adaptable Structures is an exhibition that presents models, drawings and a multiple-level brick installation by Toh Shimazaki Architecture. It opened this week in the Toto Gallery, 140-142 St John Street, London
EC1V 4UA and is on until 8 October. Worth a look.
The London Design Museum is showing a major exhibition of John Pawson's work. Known for his rigorous process of design and minimalism he creates architecture and product designs that offer visual clarity, simplicity and grace. Marco Zanta's images of the exhibition can be seen on Arch Daily and the exhibition is on until 30th January 2011.
Formica Limited has launched its new Collection including intriguing premium textures and many new unique designs.
LondonKillsMe is an independent design and screen print company based in London specialising in designing and making fashion and interior products of the highest quality. It has been described as a lifestyle anti-brand and a movement towards a more social conscious consumer who takes an ethical approach to lifestyle products.
The Blueprint Awards are back at 100% Design with a format that guarantees the best work receives a prestigious Blueprint Badge. Opening up the conventional awards structure, there is no limit on the number of possible badge winners for the Best New Products, New Talent in 100% Futures, and the Best Use of Materials. The Blueprint Badge winners were selected by Peter Kelly, editor of Blueprint, and design author and curator Max Fraser in late July.
Takashi Murakami's whirlwind exhibition of manga-inspired works comes to the Palais de Versailles, Paris, in a display of 22 bright coloured sculptures - does it work with the historic background of the palace? What do you think?
Madrid architect Antón García-Abril of Ensamble Studio has installed two enormous girders that slice through the Arsenale exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Entitled Balancing Act, the installation comprises one girder balanced across the other and supported at one end by a metal spring.
The Industry Gallery, Washinton DC, is holding a new exhibition called Nature/Data by New York-based Italian designer and architect Antonio Pio Saracino. The exhibition features eleven chairs that are constructed in a range of materials including plywood, metal, carbon fiber and synthetics and in various forms such as molecules, leaves, blossoms, and crystals. Great furniture designs that inspire.
Know your chairs? Try this new iPhone app and see if your knowledge is up to scratch. Design Icon: Chairs showing silhouettes of design icons and asks for their name, designer or date. It was developed by Mark Stevens from Fail Forwards in Copenhagen and costs 59p from the App Store See more here. There is also one for fonts coming soon.
Miami-based Interior designer Charles Allem has designed the interior of the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong. It is just simply stunning. See loads more pictures of this amazing hotel here. They speak for themselves.
Aboday Architects has designed a 2 storey house located in Bumi Serpong Damai, Tangerang. It is part of a new gated housing cluster, and the house is an amalgamation of an existing house and a new construction. A feature of the house is a sculptural slider of concrete tucked in the corner between the two buildings. This is the transporation of choice of the 5 year old boy who lives in the house, sliding from his bedroom in 2nd floor to the dining room on the 1st floor.
A new digitally fabricated installation by Jonathan Henry Arseni Zaitev from Anonymous Studio called “Alexandria”, is to be situated in the Architecture Gallery of the Southern Polytechnic State University. It is to open at the State University's biannual exhibition of young professional work as a part of the “Summer Salon 2010”. Alexandria hovers above the floor and drapes across the gallery, transforming a canopy into an intriguing installation. “The symbolic disillusionment with the political datum of the ground relinquishes the installation from prescriptive idealizations. Alexandria’s canopy will not be tainted by agendas but will be appropriated but those who are most likely to contribute to it,” explained the studio.
Posts
