Should You Love Direct Mail?

Direct mail response rates have reached a 14-year high, according to the Direct Marketing Association's latest Response Rate Report.

So if you've been looking for a competitive weapon, look no further.

If your foes have abandoned the mailstream, you have an opportunity to dominate the channel with the highest response rate of all.

The response of direct mail for house lists now stands at 5.3%; the response rate for rented lists, at 2.9%.

Dazzling, compared to other channels.

Web advertising garners a paltry .9% response; email, a .6% response for house lists, and a .3% response for rented lists; social a .6% response; and paid search a .5% response. None even cracks 1%

While email and social have a higher ROI (122% and 28% respectively), direct mail's ROI (27%) ain't too shabby.

What's not to love?

5 Keys to Content Marketing Success

Sadly, 6 in 10 content marketers can't measure success.

Measuring success requires that you establish goals and KPIs, says DMG's Gordon Plutsky:

Reach. How many people does our content touch? Measures include page views, social impressions, newsletter opens, etc.

Engagement. How many people read our content? Measures include clicks, PDF downloads, video views, etc.

Sharing. Do people share our content? Measures include shares on social networks, forwarding of links, forwarding of newsletters, etc.

Conversion. Do people raise a hand? Measures include list sign-ups, form completions, webinar sign-ups, sales inquiries, etc.

Revenue. Do people buy anything? To measure sales, you must code your inbound tactics and import the attributions to your CRM system—a process that defies even the most practiced marketers.

Feel daunted? View success as a "comprehensive strategic plan rather than a ream of numbers," Plutsky says.

B2B Print Advertising Lingers On

Print may be passé, but B2B marketers nonetheless spent $9.75 billion on print ads last year, according to MediaRadar. That's more than the GDP of many nations, including Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Oman and North Korea.

Ad dollars are no doubt shifting to digital, as B2B marketers devote more of their money each month to email, native ads, and video ads than print.

And 6 of 10 B2B marketers who spend money on digital advertising spend nothing on print.

The stalwarts who do are narrowing the list of magazines they place ads in, favoring industry-leading ones over niche ones.

B2B magazine publishers, of course, are scurrying to go digital and diversify their lead-gen offerings.

We Didn't Start the Fire

Since Friday can't be a national holiday, let's at least make it a one-day cease-fire. 

No Boomer-bashing on June 2, the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt, Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Boomers have been taking a lot of heat recently.

"Boomers weren’t genetically predestined to be dysfunctional; they were conditioned to be," says venture capitalist Bruce Cannon Gibney, author of A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. 

"They were the first generation to be raised permissively, the first reared on television and subject to its developmental harms, and the only living group raised in an era of seemingly effortless prosperity," Gibney says. 

"Can too much license, TV, and unearned wealth distort personalities? May I suggest looking south toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?"

While you're stagnating in a barista's job or your parents' basement, think about this, Ms. Millennial: Boomers didn't save the world; but they also didn't make it.

The album's cover proves that.

If you want to blame society's present ills on anyone, blame them any of the 66 people depicted, from Karl Marx to Carl Jung, Albert Einstein to Aldous Huxley, T.E. Lawrence to Stan Laurel, Mae West to Marlon Brando.

Give us a break.

We didn't start the fire.

Blogs Top Choice for Lead Generation

Search Engine Journal asked 230 marketers which content attracted the most leads.

Their top choice: blogs.

Four in 10 marketers (41%) named blogs the best content for lead generation (their second choice was white papers (14%)).

If blogs are indeed the best content for lead generation, shouldn't you learn how to blog effectively?

I'd suggest you begin by choosing a form. Two schools of thought prevail:

Long form. Andy Crestodina recommends 1,200 to 1,800 word posts. Google likes long posts, and readers are more apt to share them than they are their short cousins.

Short form. Seth Godin recommends "microcopy," because we live in "the age of the glance."

The choice between the two comes down to your goal:

• Are you aiming to be perceived as an authority? Then long is your best bet.

• Are you aiming to bolster awareness? Then short's your best bet.

Whichever form you choose, I'd suggest you next decide on your beat. What subjects should you cover? 

The choice is obviously most influenced by whatever you sell, but should also take into account competitors' and trade publishers' blogs (you want to be distinctive). And you should be able to crystallize your beat readily:

• We simplify fire-science breakthroughs

• We go inside SaaS marketing

• We promote faster LMS adoption

Lastly—whatever beat you choose—learn how to write readable posts.

Every post you write should be succinct, useful, insightful, startling, newsworthy, and entertaining. Every post should aim to change readers' lives; or their preconceptions, anyway. And every post should omit puffery. Save that for sales calls.

If you want to improve your blogging skills in a single day, sit down and read Bill Blunder's The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.