insights.
During her 15 years in Marketing, Rhonda has excelled at producing measurable marketing results. As Vice President of Marketing at Mail Print, her strategic insight into multi-channel marketing helps clients and agencies apply the latest direct marketing innovations to improve their results and efficiency. Rhonda is a graduate of Quincy University.
Homepage: http://www.mailprint.com
Jul 27th
According to new research by Aberdeen Group, Print On-Demand (also called POD, web-to-print or print automation) provides a dramatic improvement in customer retention and ROMI (Return on Marketing Investments). As an underwriter of Aberdeen’s research, we’re pleased to provide exclusive access to their findings.
From research by Aberdeen Group: Users of Print On-Demand achieved a 42% higher customer retention rate than non-users.
Among their findings was a correlation between companies that use a Print On-Demand solution and a dramatic improvement in customer retention. In an economy where every customer counts, a 42% higher customer retention rate among Print On-Demand users is more than noteworthy. But what’s the correlation? How does POD impact on customer retention so significantly?
Follow this link to download a free report including additional findings from Aberdeen: Print On-Demand: Driving Efficiency and Revenue Growth with Organizational Print Portals.
Many times when a company moves to a Print On-Demand or web-to-print solution, another significant shift happens. They move from static off-set printing to digital printing. Several years ago many marketing professionals questioned the quality of digital print. Today, to the naked eye, it is practically impossible to tell the difference between commercial off-set printing and digital.
Using advanced digital printing and marketing automation technology, the delivery of printed materials becomes as easy as sending personalized, triggered email. In fact, the use of both mail and email together becomes fast, efficient and very impactful.
Many companies have found it helpful to integrate their Marketing Asset Management solution with email and automated print deployment, making the creation and execution processes streamlined and efficient. In fact, in addition to improved customer retention, many companies save hundreds of thousands of dollars by moving to an integrated POD system. (See case studies at www.mailprint.com)
Thanks to the Aberdeen Group for investing in the research that quantifies what was previously suspected: POD improves customer retention and bolsters ROMI by putting a serious dent in marketing execution costs.
Jul 13th
An effective catalog has been proven to increase sales, both online and offline, by countless sources. Throw in variable data, variable imagery, on-demand printing and image generation, and an easy ordering interface, and you have a sales and marketing dream come true.
Jason Kort, Director of Marketing for Redemption Plus
I recently had the chance to talk with Jason Kort, Director of Marketing for Redemption Plus, a leading distributor of incentive and redemption merchandise. You may know them as the inventor of the “World’s Largest Whoopie Cushion.” Redemption Plus is no doubt a very fun business focused on delivering all the wonderful toys, games and prizes used by family entertainment and educational franchises nationwide.
Jason recently led the implementation of print automation and variable data technology that is improving the catalog that is essential to their business. Here’s a portion of that interview:
JK: There were really three areas that were driving me crazy:
JK: Variable data and print automation were new to us, so figuring out exactly what we needed and what we wanted to do was the biggest challenge.
JK: This is really like an IT project. Make sure you thoroughly define what you need and scope it out like an IT project.
JK: I’d love to narrow it to one, but I can only get to three:
Easy and relevant are the words that come to mind when describing this new tool Redemption Plus has created. Kudos to Jason and his team! To read more about Redemption Plus and their dream-come-true print-on-demand catalog, read the case study.
Here are some visuals of the new and improved Redemption Plus catalog.
Click on the thumbnail images to view larger, with variable information circled.
On the catalog cover, customer information and the date are personalized.
Inside the catalog, products are customized based on current items in the database. Pricing is specific to the end-users’ mark-up requirements.
Sales rep information and photograph is automatically included.
Jun 29th
Copywriting for variable data communications is lot like learning to write for the first time.
- As written by my 5-year-old son in his Kindergarten journal, translated as: “Yesterday I played my computer. It was fun. I had dinner. It was delicious. Then I had a popsicle.”
Copywriting for variable data communications is lot like learning to write for the first time. At first it seems uncomfortable and the result can be clunky copy that is readable, but doesn’t flow well. With practice, variable data copywriting takes less effort, becomes more impactful, and the copy flow smooths out until you don’t notice the use of variable information.
A few quick tips to quickly adapt to including variable data in your writing projects:
Copywriting for variable data communications requires a skill set that goes beyond typically copywriting. And as my 5-year-old would write, “If yu wont 2 be gud, yu hav to praktis.”
Jun 22nd
Managing the marketing needs of over 800 locations is no small task. Ferrellgas has done an excellent job of it, driving revenue and results on a local level. Last year they realized that they could improve their localized marketing and make their personnel more efficient with a marketing communications portal (to some of you, this means Marketing Asset Management, Marketing or Print Automation, or Web to Print.)
The effort to consolidate vendors, learn a new process, or simply loading a platform with the multitude of marketing materials and assets can be daunting. Although some companies become intimidated by the initial work it takes to launch a Marketing Communications Portal, Ferrellgas never batted an eyelash and tackled it head-on.
Today Ferrellgas can give you 80,000 reasons why that implementation process is well worth it. They will save at least $80,000 in their first year of using Mail Print’s marketing communications portal and were recently featured in Aberdeen’s report “Marketing Asset Management, Managing Brand Compliance in Distributed Marketing Environments.” The results have been everything they expected and more.
“It was an immediate, overnight turnaround, with far shorter production times, less repetitive effort, and more consultation and guidance being provided to the field offices,” said Brian Mater, Marketing Manager at Ferrellgas.
If you’d like to read more of the Ferrellgas story, check out our online Ferrellgas case study.
Jun 7th
Providing too many options in a marketing asset management solution may create a decision process that is too intense and complicated.
Years ago, Columbia professor, Sheena Ivengar ran an interesting consumer test. She set up a “free samples” table in a super market and proceeded to test the difference between sampling 6 jellies Vs. sampling 24 jellies. The net result: when 6 jellies were presented, 40% of the shoppers stopped to sample, and 30% bought jelly. While 60% of the shoppers stopped to sample from the 24 choices and only 3% actually bought jelly.
So we like the shopping experience, but struggle to make a decision when faced with too many options. I buy that.
Users of marketing asset management systems are frequently distributed sales forces, marketing departments, franchises, retailers or local stores. They use these systems to download logos and ads, and create brand-controlled, yet customizable marketing materials.
Having many options creates a great “shopping” experience and initial usage, but if too many customization options are given, over time the users may become stressed by the system. This results in fewer ads being downloaded, fewer email and direct mail campaigns being initiated, and ultimately a decrease in the amount of marketing done by your users or locations. Even worse, they may instead go outside the approved system and create materials that are not within branding standards. All this can happen simply because designing or creating the marketing materials is a taxing decision process.
When this logic is applied to companies who utilize an online ordering application for marketing asset management and marketing automation, a hypothesis begins to form:
When it is important that users repeatedly use an asset management system, having too many options decreases the frequency with which they use the system.
At this moment I have no facts to prove this hypothesis, but it is something I have witnessed for the past six years working with our communications portal. I am not hopeful that I can convince a client to perform a test and actually share the results as this is not a measurement that marketing departments are interested in proving out. So for now, we just have to be wise marketers and consider the decision process of the user when establishing how many “jellies”, asset or options are the right amount for an online marketing asset management system. And by all means, if usage of your asset management system is declining, consider testing the number of assets and options you provide your users. You may find that less is more.
May 25th
Ready to move your marketing and sales operations to the front of the class? Check out Aberdeen's report on how Best-in-Class companies are dramatically improving ROI with Marketing Asset Management.
So if you could improve your ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) by 32%, would you do it? The Aberdeen Group has recently published a research study Marketing Asset Management: Managing Brand Compliance in Distributed Marketing Environments that highlights this significant increase in ROMI by Best in Class Companies using Marketing Asset Management.
The key summary points from the report for becoming a high-performing distributed marketing organization include:
1) When creating a marketing asset management system, build it for both sales and marketing to use.
2) Use a combination of marketing asset management and marketing automation. In other words, build the marketing asset library to actually deploy or produce what your sales and marketing teams need.
I’d like to add another:
3) User adoption will make or break your long-term success and ROMI.
The keys to developing great user adoption are usability of the system and training tools. And don’t give up after the initial push at the launch of the marketing asset management tool. All good systems for distributed marketing organizations are multi-faceted and require reinforcement and training.
If you’d like to learn more about the impact Marketing Asset Management can have on your organization, you can download the Aberdeen report here.
As an underwriter of the report, we’re pleased to be able to give you free access!
May 18th
Mulling over your B2B lead generation process? Here are six "Ah-ha" moments to consider as you continue to improve your lead gen techniques.
Off. On. Off. On. If only lead generation were a faucet under my control. I am certainly seeing more need in our business and in our clients’ businesses for more leads, but only at specific times. Like most Business-to-Business (B2B) marketers today, my budget is still tight, but loosening up a bit, and I am always focused on the “Cha Ching,” or the ability of lead sources to produce profitable business.
This has made me rethink Mail Print’s lead generation process and I thought I would share my “Ah-ha” moments from the past several weeks:
Landing page forms only work if people give you real information. It’s really hard to communicate with someone named “No Name” at abc@abcdef.com. And, there’s no quicker way to turn off your sales team than to funnel them bogus leads. Make sure you have an automated or human filter in place to weed out invalid leads before they make it into your pipeline.
Lead generation tactics can become ineffective quickly. Always think in terms of what worked before, what is working now, and how many tests need to be in progress to be able to generate leads in the future.
It’s about so much more than just generating leads. Lead generation, lead scoring, lead nurturing and the all important “close” are really one big progression. One break in the process and good leads fall through the cracks and your ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) declines.
Having the right amount of lead flow is very important to adequately utilize inside sales teams. Unfortunately the amount of leads needed is constantly changing. There must be many levers to push and pull to keep everyone productive.
Email marketing is a fantastic lead nurturing tool, but it is worthless today as a lead generation tool. Need proof? Just try to remember the last time you used your spam folder as a shopping cart.
Packages or lumpy direct mail get past the gatekeeper. Sounds expensive, right? Yes, and that’s why it works. The administrative assistant can’t throw it away, so it ends up on the boss’ desk. For example, a new “heavy” prospecting tool that we created for Mail Print has already returned $10 for every $1 invested and we’ve only sent out 10% of what we have already paid for. Cha ching!
If you would like to see a sample of our “sneak it past the gatekeeper” direct mail piece, email me at rhondab[at]mailprint[dot]com. I’d be happy to share our latest innovation in variable data printing that seems to be confusing the heck out of gatekeepers and connecting us to senior and executive level management.
B2B lead generation is a work in process, literally. Working on both the tactics and the overall process is vital to finding the Cha Ching.
Apr 20th
Duplicate prospect and customer data is a nightmare for IT and Database Marketing departments, but a requirement for some direct marketing systems. The solution? Integrated systems that use live data feeds.
There is no doubt that an enterprise data warehouse has helped countless organizations consolidate their information into one central database allowing for better analysis and use of the data. This has certainly been the case for improving targeting and segmenting of direct marketing efforts. It has also been a boon to being able to use varying messaging, imagery, offers, and even formats to improve relevancy to the targeted audiences.
Increased availability of data has lead to the usage of 10s, 100s or 1000s of variables within an individual campaign. It has also lead to a new level of complexity for automating a successful ongoing campaign that uses these variables.
Good direct marketing service providers, whether it be print, email, text messaging or direct mail, can work magic with the data… after all the data is brought into their system via a data pipe or XML stream. This often causes IT departments and data analysts to cry “Foul! You just created redundant data from what was supposed to be a single data warehouse.”
So what’s the next step in email and print automation to make sure that redundant data sources are not created? Creating a live feed that continually calls to and from your data warehouse.
We have a client who utilizes a proprietary segmentation model, as well as geographic overlays, and purchase history to determine the targeting of direct mail and email campaigns. After combining this with localized ordering, they have a wonderfully targeted, relevant communications strategy that works like magic. And best of all, their data and segmentation resides with them.
Building a continual data retrieval system is not the easiest way to feed data for automated marketing communications, but is the best way to maintain the integrity of your data warehouse.
Apr 8th
Searching for the right words to describe the marketing automation, management, or execution systems you're looking for? Maybe we can help.
Marketing Asset Management. Print Automation. Marketing Automation. Communications Portals. Distributed Marketing. Web-To-Print. Confused yet?
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything fit in a nice, neat package that is easy to understand and explain? In the world of marketing communications management, many people would think the above terms all mean the same thing. I actually think they don’t. I think there are so many terms because each means something a little different:
Focuses on creating an online library of digital marketing assets such as logos, templates, stock photography, videos and radio ads for use by centralized marketing staff or a network of remote users.
A term coined to define organizations that have many local markets that are marketed to differently, whether marketing strategy and execution is controlled by a central marketing department or the local stores and locations.
The ability to order printed materials through an online printing management system. Typically, this reduces a company’s inventory waste and improves the customization available on the printed pieces.
A central repository for ordering and downloading all types of marketing communications and assets, including email, logos, direct mail, radio commercials, fliers, buck slips, etc. Marketing Communications Portals are very useful for distributed marketing organizations.
Eliminates human intervention in creating printed pieces. This could be obtained via a web-to-print application or communications portal that also employs print automation, or could be a standalone system that creates printed pieces automatically based upon data streams and live data feeds.
The process of triggering marketing communications to a specific individual or audience segment without human intervention. This differs from print automation in that the automated marketing campaigns could include email, direct mail and other channels, by themselves or combined.
I’m sure there are many more terms and buzz words that I haven’t noted here. Just like any rapidly advancing technology solution, new terms are created every day. The most important thing to understand is what you really need in a solution, regardless of what it is called.
Apr 1st
Interested in continually improving your direct marketing results? Avoid a common database and direct marketing pitfall by devoting the time needed to document your strategies and techniques.
In the past two weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down with a couple of fellow direct marketers. One is a prospective client, considering the use of variable data printing for the first time. The other is a long-time friend who needs help getting a better ROI on his direct mail and email campaigns. Both have worked in online, database or direct marketing for many years, and both have large enough budgets to really drive revenue.
Ironically, both have the same, simple problem: somewhere along the way, the “doing more with less” mantra meant the elimination of documentation. So now one has a great strategic plan (and it is documented), but failed to log all of the results over time. The other had a great testing plan, but didn’t document it, and six months later can’t remember the details regarding the target audiences.
Some of you may think this could never happen to you. I challenge you to think back to a time when your plan (and I know it was the most stellar, innovative, revenue-producing plan ever written) was modified beyond recognition by the time it got through your boss, your boss’s boss, the client, legal, compliance and the ten other stakeholders. Did you change the plan to reflect all the final decisions?
As direct and database marketing become more intricate and complex, it is impossible to remember all the detailed changes that take place over the course of the strategic planning process. If you don’t know what you did or how it worked, where does this leave you? Back at the beginning. Database and direct marketing is an iterative, building process. So no matter how frazzled, busy and stretched your marketing department becomes, don’t shortcut the documentation process and make a ginormous mistake. You’ll thank yourself for knowing exactly what you did, why you did it, and the resulting outcomes.
Ginormous as defined by Merriam Webster’s online dictionary:
Pronunciation: \jī-ˈnȯr-məs\
Function: adjective
Etymology: gigantic + enormous
Date: circa 1948
extremely large : humongous