The Future Has Been Delivered to Your Mailbox

“The Future Has Been Delivered to Your Mailbox” by Jason Meyers, Entrepreneur Magazine, July 2010

Just take a trip to the mailbox and what do we find? Junk mail. My first thought is to toss it into the garbage. How effective is it? Marketers realize approximately 99% of it goes unnoticed and the balance does not generate quality leads. The dollars are staggering; the Direct Marketing Association states that 54% of all advertising dollars spent in the United States go into direct-marketing channels. In 2009, that translates into more than $149 billion with direct mail and catalogs making up $44 billion of that. Furthermore, marketers are finding direct mail frustrating because of their lack in ability to quantify results.

Meanwhile, social media has changed how we make buying decisions. With digital video recorders we are lucky if we watch one commercial, but you can bet your checking connections on Facebook and Twitter. Was it possible to combine a direct-mail campaign with social media and other web technologies? Shawn Burst, founder of Dukky, saw potential in the unredeemed coupon market. He knew that the most effective campaigns have good offers and good mailing lists. Shawn developed Dukky which would be an intelligent lead generation tool using social media. This tool would allow for print advertising to be trackable, real time data for their campaigns, and continue to build a high quality mailing list. Dukky, a software as a solution, monitors companies campaigns in real time and collects detailed information about their customers. How does it do this? Dukky’s tool for bridging the online and offline worlds is called a PURL (personalized URL). An individual would receive an offer in the mail with a targeted URL (for example: gift.com/johndoe) and would be required to visit the internet. This website would have targeted information about the prospect. Dukky is finding people are intermingling their online and offline worlds. The PURL leads responders to a microsite created exclusively for the individual customer. It will mirror the direct mail campaign, but in order for John Doe to get what he wants he is required to share a little more information. This information is collected and tracked on the Dukky platform. At the end, John Doe gets what he wants and is offered a quick (one button click) way to share the offer with his friends through social media. “The end result: a deep connection with the customers before they even step foot in the store. A rich database for future marketing. Aind incredibly a good chance that the customer himself will become a viral marketing agent.”

When John Doe sends off these offers to his “friends” through social media, Dukky tracks not only the initial send, but all forwards his friends send, and so on. These are all tracked back to John Doe and Dukky determines the effectiveness of John Doe for future targeted campaigns. Dukky also tracks the campaign and its successes by person and even the region it is doing well in. All allowing companies using Dukky to further target market future campaigns.

Companies such as BMW, Chick-fil-A, Direct TV, and Dominoes Pizza are seeing real success with this tool. It is becoming very valuable for the companies using Dukky. Their clients have been generating anywhere from 20 to 32% response rates on email campaigns and building very strong marketing/mailing lists. A remarkable number that Dukky believes is being generated by their personalized URL and the viral peer sharing that is created. This is not just for large companies because Dukky has developed a small business version. A company can start using Dukky at just $99 per month. This inexpensive solution pays large dividends in order to capture valuable data, increase conversions, identify your influencers, and gauge the purchase intent of your products.

By Antkeg Remi for e-marketingclass