Calibrate all attributes of your media mix to boost campaign ROI

Maximise your campaign's effectiveness by fine-tuning your media mix. Explore strategies for precise targeting, optimal timing, and creative optimisation, and see how integrating different media channels can lead to better results.

Effectiveness

Written by Sonia Danner, Marketreach 26 July 2024

Being a marketer is a dynamic and imaginative job that carries a lot of responsibility for delivering results. We have the excitement of constantly learning about our audiences, strategising and creating some of the best ideas.

And we have the rewards of recognition as businesses do know the importance of investing in advertising. You just have to look at the stats on global ad spend which is forecasted to reach a record-breaking $1 trillion (£791 bn) in 2024, according to WARC.¹

But with this recognition of marketing as a growth engine comes huge pressure to demonstrate ROI to the C-suite. A continuing cost of living crisis², inflation and supply chain disruption have all put pressure on company profit margins and mean procurement and finance teams put all business activity under greater scrutiny.

A big challenge for marketers trying to optimize and measure the effectiveness of any specific marketing program and deliver results is the increasingly complex customer journey.

The number of potential channels and platforms is increasing and consumer behaviors have become less predictable. No marketer has enough budget to cover off every potential customer touchpoint but they can adjust their media mix to help drive the outcomes that really matter.

Effective media planning needs an overview.

Marketers are paid to make tough calls on media budget allocation and need to assess the attributes and abilities of all channels to bring home business-critical results. Considerations for an optimum media mix include the commercial and cultural impact of channels, the level of attention they command and expected response, audience reach, and the overall contribution to the customer experience (CX).

All channels bring something to the media mix, but marketers and agencies need to keep an eye on developments in the media landscape and adjust investments accordingly. For example, Google’s plan to deprecate cookies, though postponed, is still in play and will require marketers to find substitutes for online audience tracking, including more reliance on first-party data, to drive actions and results.

Being open to new ways to deliver effectiveness

The best marketers are by nature curious and willing to examine new ways of doing things. Maybe it’s time to be more open-minded about the levers we can pull to drive conversion?

In the swift-changing media landscape, direct mail is more relevant now than ever. Marketers are recognizing its potential to disrupt customer journeys in a positive way and how it can deliver measurable ROI.

Recent research by MarketReach/B2B International on the relative advantages of mail shows it was used or recommended by more than 60% of polled businesses, with more than four-fifths of users having done so in the past year.

"The volume of Direct Mail that goes out is much lower than it was back in our day. Now people receive mail and see someone’s taken the time to write to me. Clearly, it's a brand that I've got a relationship with. So, let's see what they've got to offer. I love digital marketing. But brands can't survive on that alone."
- Pete Markey, Chief Marketing Officer at Boots

Direct mail’s physical presence captures attention, builds a personal connection, and drives action and results. The Marketreach/WARC Attention Report³ highlights the enduring value of direct mail, showing that 58% of mail is retained for future reference, to be re-read, shared, or saved for later use. This retention rate underscores direct mail's ability to remain relevant in a consumer's mind over time.

In terms of prompting the next action, the report analyzed 1,475 pieces of mail and found that each item drove 16% of recipients to consider the brand, 9% to take a purposeful action, and 5% to transact, demonstrating mail's effectiveness in guiding consumers through the path-to-purchase, from initial consideration to final transaction.

Our Effectiveness Report⁴, also developed in association with WARC, provides further evidence of direct mail's impact on marketing outcomes. Campaigns that include direct mail are 52% more likely to report ROI effects and 43% more likely to report revenue uplifts.

Marketing measurement and results

We know all channels have a role to play in an effective media mix, but to demonstrate your choices are sound and to unlock more marketing budget, you’ll need to produce measurable results that make sense to the C-suite.

Developing standardized, consistent metrics is an ongoing challenge for media, and newer channels like Retail Media and CTV are grappling with these issues⁵. Mail too has had to work through the problem, and now it’s much more straightforward and cost-effective to use A/B testing and other methodologies⁶ to evaluate the impact of a mail campaign on revenue and market share.

JICMAIL (Joint Industry Committee for Mail) also provides audience measurement and campaign impact data for direct mail⁷, improving the integration process of direct mail into econometric models.

Thanks to robust mail measurement frameworks powered by innovations in technology, marketers can draw out actionable insights to refine their mail strategies for better customer engagement.

“When we launched Flight Club invitations through Direct Mail, it was the first time EasyJet had ever done anything that wasn’t email-based marketing. It was genuinely different for the business to move away from digital. I think we got the sweet spot right in terms of quality, impact, but not so expensive that I couldn’t get it signed off. But it did absolutely have the impact that we hoped for in terms of just being different.”
- Lis Blair, Group Chief Marketing Officer at Money Supermarket

Rory Sutherland and Lis Blair, CMO MoneySupermarket

Marketers can’t lose sight of their core job of helping drive business growth, and no channel can achieve this alone. With a balanced media mix, marketers can create more cohesive, impactful campaigns that resonate with their audiences and deliver the desired ROI. Find out why marketers are choosing to use mail in the media mix to deliver strong commercial results for their business.⁸

Get up to speed with how mail can create a significant impact as part of your campaign plan by downloading the WARC Attention Report.⁹ And watch senior marketers discuss their use of mail in the Mail Unleashed video series.¹⁰

Calibrate all attributes of your media mix to boost campaign ROI

Effective media planning needs an overview.

Marketing measurement and results

Further Reading

Keep up to date

Calibrate all attributes of your media mix to boost campaign ROI

Effective media planning needs an overview.

Marketing measurement and results

Further Reading

See revenue soar with mail

Brands see better results when mail is in the media mix

Keep up to date