Fall is just around the corner, so prepare to ramp up your sales and marketing efforts with these September multichannel campaign ideas:

Theme: Read a Book Day (Sept. 6) and International Literacy Day (Sept. 8)
Goal: Lead generation, social responsibility
Industries: Insurance, financial services, direct sales

• Send out a direct mail flyer or postcard. On one side, have information about you and your business.
• On the other side, promote the cause of literacy with book recommendations pertaining to your industry. For example, if you’re in banking, include some of the best-sellers in financial planning. If you’re in health insurance, list some of the best-sellers in health & wellness.
• On the side with the book recommendations, include a call-to-action, such as signing up for your newsletter, setting up a meeting or committing to a free trial, and give them a QR code to follow through on. Then, you have some options:
› Tell them that as their reward, they will receive an Amazon gift card and/or be entered in a drawing to win a much more lucrative Amazon gift card. Depending on your audience and budget, you could even let them select a book from a list of titles that you would have sent to them for free.
› Allow your audience to select a book from a list that you will send to a friend of their choosing (giving you another lead/prospect).
› To go a more charitable route, on a landing page they are sent to after they sign up, give them a list of children’s books to choose from that you will donate to a local children’s literacy charity. (Who wouldn’t sign up just to donate a book to a child?)
› Depending on which of the three “rewards” you choose, you will need to make the second side of your direct mail piece reflect those options.

Theme: Start of Football Season (late August. / early Sept.)
Goal: Local lead generation, awareness
Industries: Bars, restaurants, retail, e-commerce, insurance, financial

• The goal of this campaign will be to put together something that resonates with local audiences and will have staying power beyond the month of September.
• Create a direct mail sports schedule calendar to send to a local mailing list. Put local high school and college football teams’ major games on the calendar.
• Depending on population and population density, try to keep it to one major metropolitan area or, if a more rural setting, a several-county radius. (Tip: look up the high school athletic conference in your target market and make that your geographic target.)
• On the calendar, include information about your business and a QR code link to your website. If possible, include an offer of 2 free tickets to a high school football game of their choice or a raffle of two tickets to a college game of their choice if they participate in a particular call-to-action.
• Even if they don’t complete the call-to-action, many of them will still keep the schedule, which you can make is in-depth as you want. Really know your audience and target it to them. If one team has a really big following, make them a big focus of the calendar. Don’t shy away from variable data printing to make certain team-themed calendars for certain areas. Just be sure to get permission to use logos if want to use any.

Theme: Fight Procrastination Day (Sept. 6)
Goal: TBD
Industries: TBD

• We’re holding off on this one until next month.