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Using Multiple Media to Boost Results
September 22, 2008

Although my posts in “Making Marketing Work” have focused on print media, success with print marketing is not print-centric. If you look at some of the most successful case studies, print is simply a component of a larger marketing campaign. Increasingly, marketers are refining their skills at combining multiple media to drive home the message.



But these aren’t just any old channels. They are traditional channels—print, email, Web—amplified with personalization and dynamic content. Recently, I ran across a terrific example of how powerful this marketing strategy can be.
Following AXA's Example
The campaign came from AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company. You know the commercials—the 800-lb. gorilla in the room. AXA Equitable decided to launch a new b2b campaign, dubbed the AXA Challenge. The goal was to drive financial advisors (rather than consumers, which had been its previous target market) to a dynamic website where they could do more than find out about the company. AXA Equitable wanted to create a conversation that allowed them to compare its products to those of its competitors.
To generate interest, AXA relied on mailers, e-mail, and both online and print ads. All of the ads featured the AXA gorilla to create interest and to help reinforce the brand.  It also added an incentive—a $5 coffee card from Starbucks—for everyone who went to the AXADistributors.com Web site and did the comparison.
The financial advisor would land on a dynamic landing page that used background data to pre-fill their answers as they went through. Instead of the usual progress bar, the page also contained a coffee cup that slowly filled up as the user finished the comparison. 
Fabulous Results
In the end, AXA Equitable credited the multiple touch points and the consumer-like creative with terrific results.

“The best feedback was the response rates, which were tremendous and the fact that we ultimately sold a lot of products,” says Goodstein. “On the e-mail side, the response rate was 58%, while our direct mail had a 9% response rate. I've been doing direct marketing for a long time and I've never seen responses like this.”

Not every marketer can create its own 800-lb. gorilla, but even small marketers can combine media. Reinforce your print campaign with email. Prime the direct mail pump with email. Use strategically placed banner ads and other online media according to your budget. Work with a creative, Web-savvy marketing or print marketing services provider to get ideas.
Different channels are like Reese’s and chocolate—they are better together. 

Have questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at info@digitalprintingreports.com. For more information on primers for marketers and small businesses on digital, 1:1, Web-to-print, and personalized URL applications, visit Digital Printing Reports. You can also keep up with all of my posts on EBS, The Inspired Economist ("Greening Print Marketing"), and other blog sites by following me on Twitter.

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on September 22, 2008 | Comments (0)