Where Online Meets Offline

I should talk about this topic more, but online is just SO fascinating and I’ve been immersed in off line for the last 4 years so it’s routine to me. Since we discontinued our old poorly performing affiliate program at the beginning of February, I’ve been focused on growing our new Reseller Program and much more improved Affiliate Program. We decided, as I’m sure we’re legally bound, to pay out all pending commissions, regardless of whether or not they met our minimum threshold. This meant 400+ checks being processed by accounting, then printed, then signed, then put into envelopes, then posted, then actually put into the mail. This took about a month to get through the internal systems and the checks were sent out a couple weeks ago.

Since many of our affiliates in the old program had long abandoned the program, a lot of checks are coming back unable to be delivered. I’ve been contacting people and resending the checks as I get new addresses, and with every check I’m re-sending I’ve been throwing in one of my business cards. I realize today that this is the epitome of online marketing (affiliate payments) meets off line marketing (business cards).

It just goes to show that you can’t keep exclusively to one medium or another. There’s such a vast audience out there for your product or service – and they’re not all going to be able to be found in one place. It’s important – maybe now more than ever – to integrate your direct mail marketing with landing page testing. Put your produced commercials for television onto the web and get a piece of the viral marketing cookie. Remember the old adage “don’t put all your eggs in once basket” and don’t put all your money into PPC or direct mailing.

Diversify your marketing efforts and remember that just because you’re an internet geek, not all your customers are.