In the increasingly complex world of online marketing, having a targeted mailing list and a sending a great email offer are as important as ever. But a third factor has emerged as a critical determinant of direct marketing ROI: the offer-specific landing page.

Experienced online marketers will tell you that consumers expect email links to take them directly to your offer. If a link puts them on the plain-vanilla home page for your site — or on any page where they can’t immediately spot the product or offer your email promised — they’re as likely to click away to another site as to spend time hunting for it.

Capturing these busy and easily distracted consumers (and their data and business) requires a landing page designed specifically to support your campaign. If you are mailing to a list of existing customers with cookies for your site, a prominent box on the page that greets the customer (“Welcome, Susan. Click here for your free mp3 download.”) may also work. Here are a few tips for crafting a direct mail landing page that will engage the click-through consumer:

• Keep the landing page clear and concise. Use a clearly recognizable order form, survey, or registration form.
• In the headline, refer to the email offer so people will know immediately that they’ve reached the right page.
• Stay on-topic about the offer. This will increase the likelihood that people will follow through and make the purchase or provide the sign-up data you want. Resist the temptation to talk about other products and services. (Some marketing experts even suggest removing the standard site navigation from the page to reduce distractions.)
• If your site structure allows it, keep the order/registration/survey on one page, followed by a “thank you” page that appears after the sign-up or order is submitted. This “thank you” page is the place to put standard site navigation and other information that will entice them to explore your site.

The good news about offer-specific landing pages: They not only help you meet the expectations (and gain the business) of increasingly choosey consumers; they present relatively easy and inexpensive opportunities for direct marketers to test lists and to test direct mail copy. Simply create multiple landing pages, one for each version of your mailing, then count click-throughs, signups, or sales to compare ROI.

Continuing our comments on direct marketing for Web 2.0, here are a few observations about email and direct mail offers that invite consumer interaction and participation.

Just as the advent of email marketing added “opting in” to “selling” as a goal direct marketing goal, the advent of Web 2.0 adds “inviting consumer interaction and participation” to the mix. The underlying idea is that this builds and maintains an awareness of your brand, product and service; allows you to continue to mail to the consumer, and leads to significant sales.

The relatively low cost of online marketing is what creates the opportunity to invest in relationships. This type of direct marketing is still very much in the early stages. Here are some of the offers we’re seeing marketers use to develop these relationship. In most instances, they’re asking the consumer to visit a webpage and provide or confirm opt-in information in return for the opportunity to:

• Download something of value (white paper, recipe, mp3 file, ringtone, game, podcast, or free software).
• Provide detailed feedback (often via a survey) about a product or service.
• Create a wish list.
• Enter a creative competition with the chance to win prizes or public recognition.
• Publish a public review of a product or service.

You’ll also see emails that invite the consumer to engage in viral marketing. The consumer is asked to forward the email to a friend, or to post some code (usually an attractive graphic with a click-through link) on their own blog or website proclaiming their affinity for the company. (“I love Product X, find out why.”)

Some very popular websites are already using these techniques. Amazon.com and the iTunes Music Store invite customers to contribute product reviews; Mozilla, developer of the Firefox browser, had college students competing to create Firefox Flix videos; and General Motors invited consumers create their own ads for the new Tahoe SUV.

Like all relationships, these can have their scary moments. That’s why commercial websites control publication of reviews and contest entries to make sure the content is appropriate. General Motors had to come grips with consumers whose tasteful but critical creative work spoofed, rather than promoted the SUV (and which was posted on personal blogs as well as on the GM contest site). The GM blog Fastlane concluded that “it sure got people talking about the Tahoe. Which was the whole idea, after all.”

Certainly, not all direct marketing campaigns are appropriate for using, or even testing, the participative and interactive devices associated with Web 2.0. But as more companies build this type of consumer relationship, more consumers will come to expect this type of two-way communication from the companies they do business with. Bottom line: It’s not too soon to do some brainstorming about how you might go about harnessing this power.

Earlier this week we wrote about Web 2.0 and promised to follow up with posts about some of the specific implications it has for direct mail. The first of these follow-ups deals with a growing audience of consumers Wired magazine has dubbed “the Long Tail.”

The idea of the “Long Tail” challenges the traditional view that the consumer audience for a particular product or service is a bell-shaped curve. In this traditional scenario, marketing efforts target the consumers in the large middle of the curve. Consumers out at the tail ends of the curve are considered to be niche markets, and not worth the cost to reach.

However, as online commerce evolves, the tail ends of the curve are seen in a new light. The cost of marketing to consumers at the tail ends has dropped (thanks to email) and the cost of serving them has dropped even more dramatically as searchable online catalogs replace valuable “shelf space” in stores. “The Long Tail dictates that products low in demand, when aggregated, make up a market share that exceeds the relatively small number of current best sellers,” this article on the Long Tail in Direct magazine observes.

Easy access to the Long Tail, created by Web 2.0, is a business opportunity for those who move quickly. Fortunately, the same changing Web environment that’s creating the Long Tail is also producing tools for marketing to it, including blogs, surveys, downloads, and consumer data, including rich opt-in data.

Niche businesses are springing up online specifically to target the Long Tail, and local businesses have begun using national direct mail campaigns to drive Long Tail traffic to e-commerce sites. Large businesses with robust online catalogs are turning their sights to niche consumers.

It’s not too early for direct mail marketers of all sizes to decide if they want to go after a piece of the Long Tail market. Those who are interested should start exploring new lists, taking advantage of selects to target these small but desirable audiences.

Marigold’s reputation is built on knowing about the latest and most valuable sources of consumer data. We help our customers tailor this data to create lists that reach the audiences they’re targeting. We’re gearing up to meet the challenges of Web 2.0, and want to hear from you about your needs and questions. Let’s talk.

Recognize that fellow in the airport waiting area, pulling out a PDA to check web-based email and an RSS newsreader? Does the woman listening to the videocast of a celebrity chef on her iPod look familiar?

Take a good look. Because if you’re a direct marketer, these are probably your newest customers. Consider these “new media” marketing scenarios:

Joe Doe follows a link or URL to your website and accepts cookies so you can recognize him on his next visit. What’s this but a new opportunity to do truly direct marketing, customizing the version of your site that he sees with offers based on his previous page visits or a wish list? (Amazon.com has perfected this marketing technique.)

Responding to an email offer, Susie Smith signs up on your site so she can download free podcasts, mp3s, or video. Now you have a consumer who’s opted in, in effect choosing you as her content provider. (Just as many B2B sites offer white papers to drive sign-ups, the cutting-edge business-to-consumer sites now offer a free audio or video download.)

Bottom line: The mailbox — be it at the end of the driveway, or right on the desktop — is still a prime direct marketing target, but, increasingly, it’s the first step in a complex, multi-channel marketing scenario. Marigold can help you take this crucial first step, providing business and consumer lists that closely target tech-savvy buyers, such as our list of computer and technology magazine subscribers or our opt-in list of IT-Pros. Contact us to find out more about about lists like these and how they can be further tailored to reach your target audience.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently announced draft best practices for lead generation and is seeking industry comment.

The recommendations focus on “consumer transparency and data integrity.”  Consumer transparency recommendations include permission and policy disclosure issues, while data integrity recommendations identify obligations of publishers/vendors to advertisers.

The full text of the Online Lead Generation Best Practices can be found on their website. 

Marigold is happy to announce a hot new list property: Wireless Cell Phone Subscribers. Each subscriber has opted in to receive postal, email, and even Text Messaging offers.

The Marigold Wireless Cell Phone Subscribers file provides an ideal demographic for targeting individuals that currently subscribe to a cellphone service within the United States. With over 500 cellphone wireless providers and close to 6 million active subcribers, there is simply no more comprehensive source of cellphone users available. This list is compiled from multiple sources, including providers of ringtone and wallpaper services as well as celebrity marketing campaign respondents who have opted-in to receive information from our various partners. Here are the top 5 Wireless carriers and the counts we have for them:

 
Please contact us for additional selects or to test this red hot file!

Recently Google’s AdWords program rolled out the capability to geotarget the ads that appear alongside their search results. Up until now, advertisers have only been able to restrict advertising distribution by city, state, or country. Advertisers now specify an address (or map location) and a radius within which ads should appear. For instance, a restaurant in Denver could create an ad campaign that shows ads to people who live within 5 miles of their location. For direct marketers, this enables the development of search engine advertising campaigns that complement geotargeted direct mail.

Limitations
This may sound like a great opportunity to provide targeted promotions to a particular region, but there are limitations. First, the target region is always circular, thus it would be difficult to take into account for geographic or political irregularities like waterfront residents in particular area or the cities that lie upon state of national borders. The online documentation indicates that advertisers can specify a region by clicking on points on a map, however this feature was not active at the time of this writing.

The second, and more important problem is that it is frequently impossible to correctly identify the location of web user. The most common sources of this problem are Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that route subscriber traffic through proxy servers. For instance, all AOL users appear to live in Virginia which is where all of AOL’s proxy servers reside. As a result, target regions that don’t include AOL’s headquarters will not include any AOL users. This problem is more common for home users than businesses who often have their own IP address with correct address information, although large organizations with offices far apart may have similar limitations.

Josh Freedman is the President of Web 1 Marketing, Inc. and is a frequent contributor to the Direct Marketing Blog.