Mid-year is always a good time to re-evaluate your marketing strategy, especially when there has been a period of downtime. Whether you are using direct mail, email, mobile, or social media, here is a quick checklist to make sure that, as you look forward to the rest of the year, you are hitting all of the basics.

Have you ever wondered how using multiple marketing channels impacts your results?

A recent study from Demand Metric / PFL gives some insights. In this study, “2019 Multichannel Marketing Report,” which surveyed 579 marketers, researchers asked how many channels respondents were using and how happy they were with the results. The study found that two-thirds of study participants use between three and five channels for their campaigns. Fewer respondents use six or more channels, but those that do are getting better results.

How Many Channels Are You Using in Your Campaigns?

Next, researchers asked participants to rate the effectiveness of their efforts. Consistently, respondents using more channels reported getting better results:

• 7+ channels: 77% report good or very good response rates
• 4-6 channels: 69% report good or very good response rates
• 3 or fewer channels: 61% report good or very good response rates.

Adding channels boosts results! Which channels should marketers integrate? It depends on their marketing goals, budget, and available time and resources. But direct mail comes in very high as a component of these campaigns.

When asked which channels were the most effective at reaching their target audiences, 78% of respondents cited “integrated, branded, personalized direct mail” as being effective or very effective and 61% said traditional direct mail is effective or very effective. Not only this, but 80% of study participants report that direct mail directly improves multi-channel campaign performance.

When it comes to multi-channel marketing, there is no magic bullet, but there are some trends we can count on:

1) well crafted, integrated multi-channel campaigns get better results, especially when those campaigns include direct mail; and 2) all types of direct mail are powerful, but especially those that are branded and tightly integrated with the other channels being used.

What does a well-crafted, branded, integrated direct mail campaign look like? Let us show you.

Unless you've been living under a rock the size of China, it's no surprise that it's the start of a new year and the start of a new decade. There is no shortage of blogs and articles about "How to Kick-Start Your Year" and "Health Goals You Should Set" etc. So this isn't one of those. Well, not traditionally.

The primary goal here is to discuss the overlap in which our personal life interconnects with work life, and give a few examples on how to reconnect, re-establish and reset in both a professional and personal sense.