insights.
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.”
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 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
Mar 24th
Just like milk and cookies, direct mail and email are better together.
Email is, by far, the best thing to ever hit direct marketing.
One of the newest ways we are helping our clients manage their direct communications is by helping them develop automated systems to use direct mail strategically in conjunction with email campaigns. Let me share some of the innovative ways our clients are approaching the mail/email equation:
We recently developed an automated system that generates a postcard the day after a hard bounced email. This allows our client to have their customers easily update their email addresses as soon as the old email address is no longer valid. The real beauty of this is that it is fully automated. No one has to pull a list from the Email Service Provider and send it to us. It just happens.
If a long-term customer opts-out of your email communications, what does that mean?
Our client just asks by mailing a survey after someone opts-out, allowing them to address unforeseen issues and quickly win back the appropriate customers.
Several of our clients are having success by using both email and mail in conjunction with PURLs (personalized URL), as both a way to invite their audience members to visit their personalized web sites, and to follow up with respondents to thank them for visiting and drive their next action.
This may seem simple, but one of our client’s retention marketing efforts simply consists of mailing or emailing the same information, but if they have opted in to email, they get email. If they don’t have a valid email address or if they haven’t opted in to email, they get the information mailed to them. Simple, but it works.
One of our associates recently attended Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Summit in Miami. Many of the attendees wondered why a company like Mail Print would attend such an event. They thought a company named “Mail Print” would perceive email as “the enemy.” Far from it. We were probably more successful at this event than the email companies… because we get it. Our clients need more than one successful marketing tactic to drive the revenue they need to propel their companies through this recession. And, oh boy, the magic we can make by strategically planning to use the right medium for our audiences.
Mail has not died. It just has a new BFF… email.
Mar 11th
Successful personalized marketing mixes right brain logic and left brain creative.
Highly-personalized marketing with relevant messaging, images and offers dramatically increases response rates… everyone agrees on this now, right? I mean, we’ve all read the case studies and white papers that prove it.
So why isn’t everyone doing it? For one, creating a highly-personalized marketing piece requires a creative staff brave enough to reach into the cold, sterile world of databases, segmentation and matrices, and then blend the two together. This is a serious feat of right brain/left brain, inspiration/intel, balance that can be difficult to achieve. But, as the research shows, double-digit response rates are attainable….
So I cornered several of our clients that create and produce highly-personalized marketing campaigns, and asked them for the top things they’d tell creatives about creating relevant, database-driven communications.
Here are their top five suggestions, ready for you to share with your design and marketing creatives:
Get a sample of your marketing database, and review all the options available to you. A good database could include information about their purchase history, preferences, and demographics; all info you can use to make your piece more relevant. Even simple databases can be segmented to create versioned messages and images; try region, number of employees and industry.
When adding variable fields to your designs, it’s important to know just how long – or short – the text may be that pulls in for each field. Ask your database team for a report of the longest and shortest entries for each variable field, and then proof your designs with these extremes included.
Splashing your recipient’s name across your creative can definitely capture their attention, and can be done very creatively and effectively. But some of the most effective personalized communications include hundreds or thousands of variables. If you have a strong database, some internal expertise, and a good partner, it’s time to test an intensely-variable piece.
Sooner, rather than later, call the Variable Data Printer, email service provider or direct mail marketer of your choice : ), and grill them on the process your creative will go through to be produced. Chances are, there are choices you’ll make that could negatively or positively affect the resulting pieces. Special Note: Make sure to ask them the best file formats for their workflow!
As you can tell, there’s a reason personalized marketing isn’t used by all of your competitors: it’s hard. But, it’s a lot easier once you’ve done it a few times. So start by working a couple of variables into piece before advancing to that dynamic, 1,000-variable piece you’ve been dreaming of. Starting simple will also ensure your process and hardware is correct and will prevent a server meltdown (ask me about that story sometime).
Haven’t read one of those reports about personalized marketing improving response rates? Let me recommend this case study or this white paper. Want to know more or add something to the list? Use the handy comment tool below.
Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dierkschaefer/ / CC BY 2.0
Mar 1st
And the winners are... the direct marketers whose 2010 marketing tactics reflect the lessons learned during 2009.
We recently received an email from the KCDMA (the local chapter of the Direct Marketing Association) notifying us that our three entries in their 2010 AMBIT competition are all winners. The awards ceremony is still more than a month away, so we’ll have to wait to find out the exact trophies we’ll be bringing home (we’re going for the gold!)
The notification email made me think back to last year’s big winners, and the direct marketing lessons each one represented. Unlike many competitions, which focus more on the aesthetic value of entries, the DMA competition is heavily-weighted towards actual results, such as response rates, ROI and revenue generation. So, the top awards of 2009 recognized direct marketing campaigns that really made a financial impact for businesses. Here are two lessons learned from 2009’s winners:
As Sprint’s Best In Show winner illustrated, direct mail marketing with substance (read “size”) can help you get your message past gatekeepers and make an impression on the decision makers. Like other bulky mail successes, Sprint’s “PB&J Wireless Integration” campaign made up for a high cost-per-piece with incredible response rates. The key to making a bulky piece like this worth it’s weight? Make sure your marketing database is clean and targeted and your piece is eye-catching and memorable.
Mail Print’s Most Innovative Solution award winner was one several entries that highlighted how personalized marketing can increase response rates. However, I think it was singled out for the Most Innovative Solution award because of the 5% purchase rate it achieved. The awarded campaign for the new Gladstone Community Center used personalized direct mail and PURLs (see our Portfolio for samples) to generate leads from a highly-targeted list. The key? Create a profile of the most likely purchaser of your product and service, and use demographic and geographic list selection to build a marketing database of people who match this profile. Then, market to them with highly-relevant messaging.
I’m looking forward to watching this year’s ceremony to see how many companies parlayed the lessons learned at last year’s competition into their past year’s initiatives. What direct marketing lessons did you learn during 2009, and how are you implementing them during 2010?
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Feb 22nd
Using the recipient’s name is an easy way to make your direct mail and email marketing relevant to the recipient, but I am often asked, “How do I use my data to create a more personalized direct marketing experience?”
The answer lies in using your data. I know many people have a hard time making the connection between “using data” and how that translates into variable direct marketing, so let’s look at some examples:
1) Getting people to interact with your web site is great, but making them search for information that you should already know… not cool. (And not personalized or relevant.)
In the personalized email below, you’ll see all the variable information highlighted, including the location, price, discounted savings, show logos, dates and even a Personalized URL The recipient doesn’t have to go to a web site and then search for the information that applies to them.
By the way the video that plays at the Personalized URL, is a variable video. The only video that plays is the one for the location of the recipient. They don’t have to select or weed through the videos of shows that aren’t coming to their area. Check it out at: www.BroadwayForASong.com/KristinaSmith.
2) Write copy for each audience as if you were speaking directly to a recipient within that audience. The example below is tailored to families. It speaks specifically to the amenities that a family will value, not to singles or seniors, and it certainly doesn’t try to address all the audiences at the same time.
3) Location, location, location. When proximity is important, tell them just how close they are.
4) All customers are not created equal, so why would you offer them all the same thing?
5) If nothing else, always use their name. It’s easy to get creative with imagery, but don’t forget basic copywriting techniques, like using their name within the text.
6) And finally, just for fun, the piece below contains over 75 variables to make the direct mail piece relevant to the recipient. Can you find them all? I’ll give you a hint… there is variable copy within variable copy.
Using variable data in mail, email and personalized web pages becomes much easier when you understand how to apply what you already know to create relevant marketing materials. The significant improvement in response and purchase rates makes it well worth the effort.