insights.
Apr 17th
Today reality isn’t always wysiwyg (what you see is what you get). We have reality, virtual reality, alternate reality, digital reality and now augmented reality. This great new tool may be on the way to helping marketers get their clients to experience a new level of reality and help drive engagement and hopefully revenue
Augmented reality is a digital layer over the real world that you can’t see with the naked eye but can see with the camera on your smart phone or computer, according to Vivian Rosenthal, founder of New York City-based AR start-up, GoldRun. Get a glimpse of Rosenthal’s use or AR in this promo (an invisible pop up store) for AirWalk sneakers.
You experience a tiny sampling of AR when you watch a televised football game. The yellow first down lines aren’t painted on the field itself, but inserted digitally to enhance your viewing experience.
A Boeing researcher introduced AR in 1990. By 2008 it was a $6 million industry and expected to grow into a $350 million industry by 2014.
AR is Legalized Steroids for Direct Mail
The movie Avatar used AR in its integrated marketing campaign to launch with Avatar teamed with Coke Zero. Movie buffs could hold their Coke can with the Avatar symbol in front of their webcams and interact with parts of the movie on a “visceral” level.
Don’t be fooled into dismissing AR as all fun and games, it offers an entirely new avenue for engagement and in particular direct mail, according to the February issue of the U.S. Postal Service’s Deliver magazine. The cover and feature article in this issue featured black and white artwork that came to life, movement, and color when you held your smart phone over the graphic after downloading the recommended app.
Taylor, one of the largest direct mail printers in the nation, used AR as the star attraction of its trade booth at the 2011 Direct Marketing Association convention in Boston. Visitors were given a postcard and sent to a special website to unlock the encoded graphics and information. Art Calamari, who manned the booth, said he watched hundreds of attendees share the technology and message with hundreds of other attendees – turning a direct mail print piece into a word of mouth brushfire.
Imagine making your direct mail even more interactive and relevant like some insurance companies have by sending out postcards with agent photos and a neat graphic that changes weekly when scanned just like a rotating billboard. The selling point is helping consumers hold on to that print piece longer as well as being moved further down the sales pipeline as the information changes.
AR is a Magnet for Millennials
Research shows that if the messaging and the experience are not engaging, and do not create brand desire, Millennials may just move on to a competitor. Millennials are defined as those born in the 1980s, whose lives revolve around being constantly connected to technology.
One successful augmented reality iPhone app that attracts Millenials is Le Bar Guide. Using GPS data, the technology locks onto a location serving the popular Belgian beer, Stella Artois, by populating the phone with directional arrows pointing users to the nearest pub that serves it.
Can You Afford Augmented Reality Marketing?
According to Rosenthal, AR campaigns can be as inexpensive as $5,000 and as high as $100,000. She compares costs with full-page magazine print ads, which start at $100,000 in major magazines based on cost per thousand readers or as high as $400,000 for a one-page ad in the coveted Sports Illustrated issue.
As part of a vacation promotion for Snow Mass Ski Slopes, three-dimensional renderings necessary for the AR campaign ran approximately $10,000.
Regardless, the spend definitely can be tied to customer engagement, acquisition, and retention thanks to the measurability of the interactivity and technology.
If the numbers work and the medium directly aligns with your target market, then executing an augmented reality campaign can both bring home the bacon and establish your company as an innovation leader.
Feb 14th
Want to start the New Year with a spike in business, web traffic, or sales? You can unequivocally without fail by mailing postcards. Do it now by following some simple guidelines and you can generate all the sales leads you want.
In today’s high tech world where social media campaigns and multi-channel campaigns that sometimes can take months to develop are the rage, we forget low-tech postcards still work every time when executed correctly.
The father of advertising, David Ogilvy, calls postcards his secret weapon in his book, Ogilvy on Advertising. After just a few months in advertising, a client on a limited budget tested Ogilvy’s wherewithal at the ripe age of 37. This client walked into Ogilvy’s London agency wanting to advertise the opening of his hotel with just $500 to spend. Ogilvy bought $500 worth of postcards and sent invitations to everybody he found in the local telephone directory. The hotel opened with a full house. “I had tasted blood”, says Ogilvy in his Confessions.
Factor in these 10 must dos into your postcard mailing and your phone will ring as well as your company’s cash register:
As for industry averages, the DMA analyzed 1,122 industry-specific campaigns and determined that the average response rate for direct mail was 2.61%. Postcard production coordinators see rates higher than 5% with a well directed postcard to send people to the web. Retail stores and catalogs can pull ROI as high as 7% with postcards.
Want to get really jazzed about the power per penny of a postcard? Yale Appliance mailed postcards at a cost of $8,000 and pocketed $2.3 million in sales in one-day. Pull out your Mac book and get your postcard campaign cooking.
Know your target audience, pull your list, design a simple postcard with a powerful graphic and call to action and start the New Year off by generating goodwill and good cash flow. Postcards are direct mail marketers best kept secret.
Jan 17th
Choosing a marketing channel was not an issue for Shakespeare in the 1600s when his only option was to dip his quill in the ink well and draft his plays on whatever writing surface was available. Marketers today have many channels in which to communicate with their customers, but the savvy marketer considers the environment AND the marketing return on the investment.
If you’re a supporter of going green off the clock, shouldn’t you be practicing what you preach on the clock? Does your company have environmental initiatives and is your marketing department being good stewards of it resources?
To save the planet, marketers can dedicate themselves to supporting resources that are sustainable. One way to do that is to reuse, recycle, and repurpose what you generate day to day in your work with paper topping the list. Paper comes from wood, which is one of the few true natural renewable resources we have.
Thanks to tree farming (the 95 million acres of forest planted and harvested for commercial purposes) the pulp and paper industry replenishes more than it takes and ensures the sustainability of our forests by planting 1.7 million trees every day – way more than is harvested.
Nearly 60 percent of all paper in the U.S. is recycled. In comparison, less than 20 percent of U.S. electronic devices are recycled.
So while emails are deemed free to send, the technology behind emails has a business and environmental cost. A study by Thomas Jackson of the Department of Information Science, at Loughborough University, reports that emails cost a business between $8,000 to $16,000 per employee based on an averaged salary of $40,000.
Email costs resulted from ambiguous unclear messages, email overload, security and privacy issues, and email interruptions. The formula accounts for time spent reading email (average read time and average number of emails per day).
McAfee, released a report in 2009 called the Carbon Foot Print of Email Spam Report. In its report McAfee cited:
A picture is worth a thousand words. Be sure to check out the great infographic from WebPageFX.
So what can you do to be more environmentally conscious while you boost business for your company? Here’s a list of ideas to become a greener marketer in 2012.
By practicing good eco-marketing, you’ll help the planet and improve customer relationships with your eco-conscious consumers.
Jan 10th
Make your mail pieces relevant and you will never be considered "Junk"
Even with the explosion of the Internet and all the different electronic and mobile marketing techniques there are today, direct mail is still a very important part of any marketing plan. Why? Because it’s direct. It speaks directly to your customer: someone you know who fits your target audience and may very well want or need your product or service.
Any good direct mail campaign must possess the following:
Using cross media (multiple advertising, marketing and PR touches) in one campaign can help reinforce your message and, thus, gain you a higher response, as people remember and respond differently to each medium. Plus, it will generate more brand awareness.
According to a survey sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association and Pitney Bowes, 39% of respondents said they tried a business for the first time because of direct mail advertising, and 70% said they renewed a business relationship because of a direct mail promotion.
The great news is, the tactics used in direct mail can not only lead your audience to other media (e.g., e-mail to a website), they can also be replicated in other marketing channels. For example, email has probably become one of the most important mediums. This is great as you can also personalize your message and customize your offer specifically for the reader. Also, just like printed direct mail, email can include variable images and text to tailor it to a specific audience.
Remember, however, that on average, customers view physical mail as “less intrusive” than telephone calls or email because they can view the messages at their own convenience. So, how do you make it relevant?
Your contact database is a great place to start. It contains all sorts of demographic statistics (or it should) that can help you tailor the right message for your audience. The effectiveness of a direct mail piece (just like the effectiveness of an email campaign) is measured by the response it generates. When using direct mail, consider using a QR code or personal URL (PURL) to enable readers to take quick action and enable you to track those specific actions.
A postcard is an ideal direct mail piece for this kind of fast, reliable and trackable method. Its size is perfect for a sales message and call to action, yet it doesn’t need to be opened for the message to be seen. If sending the reader to a landing page through a QR code or PURL, make sure to keep them there by personalizing that content, too, making your visitor feel like you truly understand their world.
What kind of direct mail campaigns have worked for you? Share your experiences with cross media, relevance and response here.
Dec 6th
Paper or plastic? Both are possible with direct mail.
First Class,standard class, or Fed X? Again all three and more are possible with direct mail, which is scalable to your budget depending on the overall strategy and of course the budget.
What’s my point? That direct mail is relevant. In fact, it’s thriving despite increases in postal rates, despite social media popularity, despite a growing number of other marketing channel choices.
In the July 2011 issue of Journal of Marketing, the results of a research project on multi-channel marketing (telephone calls, email, direct mail) for the service department of a large auto dealership was reported. Research found that customers accepted about twice as much direct mail, compared to phone calls and email, before spending levels started to decrease. The researchers hypothesized that “customers view physical mail as less intrusive than telephone calls or email—they can view such messages at their own convenience.”
We’ve pulled these facts that show direct mail is alive and being ripped open and read despite all the hype about consumers clicking and tweeting away on their digital devices instead:
It’s funny, and a reminder of staying power, to look back on some of our modern day advancements. Below are five examples of products that have become obsolete and five that have stood the test of time, including direct mail which has been around since at least 1872.
Obsolete |
Stood Test of Time |
| Beepers or Pagers | Newspapers (since 1620) |
| Car phones. Land Lines | Direct Mail (since 1872 with Montgomery Ward catalogs) |
| Camera Film | Ice Cream Trucks (1936) |
| Printed Yellow Page Directories | Parades (1924 with Macy’s Thanksgiving parade) |
| Records, VHS, CD players | Town Hall Meetings (since 1633) |
Perhaps direct mail’s staying power and sales-conversation impact is why direct mail is Google’s best-kept marketing secret. Yes the king of online, mails for sales. It regularly mails to business people to sign up new customers for its PPC (pay for click) program.
So harness the power of direct mail in 2012. It’s the best-kept secret for companies who are surveying, fundraising, launching, re-launching, expanding, moving, publishing, cataloging, and staying relevant and in the black in their business sector today.
Nov 22nd
Turn your marketing levels up to 11 by integrating digital elements with your direct mail
The stand alone direct mail letter may soon be on exhibit at your neighborhood history museum. When is the last time you received a B2C letter at home without some sort of digital embellishment printed in the letter or inserted in the piece?
It’s probably been awhile because there are too many digital applications to layer with your direct mail to boost ROI by as much as 20%.
With the advancements in technology you have ample arsenal to beef up your direct mail pieces and associated ROI. Direct mail is still the workhorse or bread that you can spread digital media on to find new customers or build increased customer loyalty.
By providing prospects or customers multiple options to respond to your direct mail campaign, you increase response and the value of those responses. The Direct Marketing Association study found that customers who buy from two channels (vs. just one) are between 20 and 60% more valuable, while triple-channel buyers are 60-125% more valuable.
For a double to triple return, use one of the six approaches below to dazzle your recipient into action.
Five Digital Elements to Amp up Your Direct Mail
Don’t depend solely on the above technologies. You still need to do the basics of creating great copy, a great headline, a great call to action, and a great mailing list. Then you can add the razzle dazzle to further strengthen your mailing campaign and reap the rewards of higher ROI for you hard work and irresistible marketing campaigns.
Nov 1st
This card was printed on recycled chipboard and mailed in an apple green envelope. It’s a unique example of how to zig when everyone else is zagging.
Oh boy another holiday card. I can’t wait to open it and see yet another card with little to no personalization, no handwritten note, and obviously no thought other than get the darned thing out the door and off my to-do list.
Here are six fresh ideas to rethink your holiday mailing approach. After all, if you can’t do it well or different, perhaps why do it at all.
Skip the Holiday Mailing
You may want to do a New Year’s mailing instead of one during the busy holiday season. You’ll miss the mailing glut — 20 billion letters, packages and cards were delivered by the U.S. Postal Service between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year. Instead surprise your clients with a powerful message to start their business off with a business-boost message you’ve crafted just for them.
Pick a Different Medium
Stand out by sending your holiday message on anything but a holiday card. Consider sending a gift tag, jumbo postcard, 3D mailing, flash drive with a holiday carol on it, an invite to a fruitcake toss, or even a movie DVD for your A-list clients.
Don’t Be Slick
Don’t jump on the bandwagon by purchasing fancy, corporate, foiled cards so available to the masses. Produce something that looks homemade, vintage, hand-drawn, or crafty. Perhaps have your children draw the art or consider finding a letterpress shop or mimicking the old-fashioned look.
Get Writer’s Cramp
Even if you have preprinted information on the business greeting card such as your name, you need to add your handwritten signature. The most memorable holiday cards should have your personal signature and a short handwritten message.
And for even more oomph, don’t use computer-generated labels. They are impersonal and make your holiday wishes look like a mass mailing.
Scrub a Dub, Dub Your List
Use the month of November or December to call to say Happy Holidays personally and at the same time verify titles and addresses. Once your data is scrubbed, segment. You don’t have to mail to the world or your entire database. Nor should you.
Sending greeting cards is a 200-year tradition that involved sending only to the select few elite and wealthy in the early to mid 1800′s. Most of the early greeting cards were hand delivered and many were quite expensive, but they soon gained mass popularity with the introduction of the world’s first postage stamp issued in 1840.
Slap on a Cheery Stamp
Finally, you might want to skip the meter machine when you’re doing the mailing. Although you could save a few cents, having a holiday-themed stamp on the envelope is a much nicer touch.
The holidays are a time to be joyful. So please use these six simple ideas to share your holiday or New Year’s message uniquely, effectively, and with true joy. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Holidays by the Numbers
Oct 26th
They live happily ever after because they both work at it.
Direct mail is like the mayo on a sandwich. The sandwich isn’t as good without it. Direct mail delivers the ROI zing while online marketing helps whet the palette.
However, direct mail often gets a bad wrap. The irony is that large scale marketers, high-tech, as well as consumer marketers, are mailing hundreds of millions—if not billions—of pieces because it’s one of the highest ROI channels out there.
Direct mail has the fundamentals that marketers need, especially direct marketers, to generate results. It is targetable so “you’re able to tell a lot, you’re able to sell a lot, you’re able to control its costs and most importantly you’re able to scale it,” according to the Kern Organization.
When it comes to new customer acquisition tactics, marrying traditional direct marketing with digital technology is highly effective. A neat trick that National Geographic Magazine employs in its pre- and post-emails is including an image of the physical mailing that will arrive in the consumer’s mail. Tests proved that emails with the image of the mailing boosted response rates. National Geographic Magazine has tested this over several mail cycles.
The pre- and post-emails focus on the offer, what you get, and the excitement of the brand. Everything you need to respond is above the fold (meaning you don’t have to scroll down a screen).
The pre-email’s subject line is, “Look for our Preferred Member Package in the mail!” The recipient immediately sees the price, the deal, the terms, and the image of the mailing. The recepient can order directly from their email.
As in a marriage, opposites attract. Research reveals that email and traditional direct mail have different strengths and weaknesses. That makes them most effective when used together. As you can tell by the graph below, direct mail is best at:
While emails fall short in the above areas, they rate high in the areas below:
Source: Quadrangles: Direct Mail & Email 2007, Direct Mail & Online 2007
Unfortunately, many marketers force the person to view their message through only one of the two most important channels: direct mail vs. email. That one-size-fits-all approach that leads to marketing oblivion can be avoided by direct mail in concert with email.
Response increases across the board when direct mail and email are combined in a multichannel campaign. If executed well, it should more than double! This two-ply marketing will strengthen your brand, especially if your marketing campaigns maintain a consistent look or theme across channels. You’ll gain mindshare, and that will lead to greater ROI.
So consider direct mail and digital marketing the perfect power couple. Let direct mail do the attention grabbing and complex communications and digital communications do the retention and closing. Putting print and electronic media together is greater than the sum of their parts.
Sep 22nd
Don't waste your marketing efforts with poorly timed offers. Know your customers and increase your ROI.
Why waste precious marketing dollars communicating to your customers weekly when they purchase from you monthly? Not matching your mailing frequency with your customers’ buying frequency makes your messages go from ripe to waste. Companies that hammer customers with repetitive offers may make them feel stalked, not catered to.
If your company truly knows its customers, you also know their shopping cycles. This information allows you to match your mailing frequency with their buying cycles. It’s counterproductive to promote to them above and beyond those buying cycles regardless of your CEO’s sales goals. If two mailings equate to $500 dollars, four mailings doesn’t necessarily equate to $1000. Unfortunately the math doesn’t work that way because of an element called free will.
Costco mirrors its customer buying cycles beautifully. Each month it mails its customers an information-rich lifestyle magazine called Costco Connection and an envelope of coupons good for the last half of the month. Why? Because Costco knows that its members spend $94 every 2.5 weeks. So to assist its members with their quest for value, Costco mails its specials through the mail twice a month. Brilliant.
Timing is just as important as frequency though it is often called marketing’s stepchild. When you target the right people with the right message at precisely the right time, you position your direct mail campaign for much higher response rates, particularly when you calculate frequency with recency and monetary value (revenue received), otherwise known as RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary).
Because frequency can be a misleading time metric, it’s best combined with recency and monetary value (revenue received) to optimize the timing of marketing campaigns. RFM turns out to be the most popular segmentation method used today, primarily because it helps hone buying-cycle matching and is easy to calculate. RFM helps you identify the very best and the very worst customers (the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent).
Let’s look at three RFM masters and see how they tie their mail drops to what’s going on in their customers’ lives:
Birthday mailings can be one of six touch-points. It is recommended that small businesses reach out to the customers at least six times a year with relevant messages and offers.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, the best months for direct mail are February through May, and September. “OK” months are January, August, and October. The absolute worst months for direct mail are June and July.
Local mailings should get mailed out on Fridays, this generally gives enough time for the mail to be sorted and delivered on the best days of the week, which are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Lowe’s coupons arrive in customers’ mailboxes just when they need them thanks to its Realtor cross-promotion. Rather than pummeling people with coupons, Lowe’s clairvoyantly mails to couples who have just purchased a home.
Lowe’s also ramps up marketing during the summer season, when it brings in $15 billion in sales and allocates marketing dollars tied to calendar events like Cinco de Mayo as it pursues the Hispanic market, according to its 2010 Media Plan.
Companies and customers win when aligning the frequency of mailings with buying habits. If your company finds itself omitting some poorly timed and irrelevant mailings, dollars saved can be shifted to another marketing campaign, or better yet, boost the voltage of your less-is-more mailings with multi-channel marketing.
Don’t forget to make sure you’re mailing to people who are still doing business with you and clearing out the people who aren’t spending money with you. It’s amazing how many small and large businesses don’t data cleanse and continue to mail promotions to people who haven’t bought from them in decades. If you haven’t received a recent order, it’s the perfect chance to call and re-engage that customer or remove them from the database.
Mail Print can help with all the above complexities, laws, and steps necessary to execute a well-timed, frequency-correct direct mail program. Once in place, the rewards and increased ROI will make you our customer for life.
Jul 6th
Use the science of direct marketing to test different channels.
So what does this all mean for marketing in the future? If the numbers provided by the DMA are averages, that means that within each category there are higher and lower ROI numbers. Some marketers are achieving great results, others not so much. My bet is the ones achieving positive profitability are the ones who are getting creative, trying new things, and conducting statistically significant tests to know what is really working and what is not.