insights.
May 21st
When Savvi Formalwear, a group of 35 independent formal wear retailers, wanted to connect with more soon-to-be brides, it chose the print and digital trifecta — direct mail, email and personalized landing pages.
All of Savvi Formalwear’s direct mail pieces were personalized using variable data printing (VDP), with coupons or incentives such as the two free airline tickets shown in the postcard in this post and a PURL that drives brides to a landing page with a store locator and Savvi Formalwear branding.
Savvi Formalwear is using the campaign to capture more of the $1 billion formal wear industry, that like other industries, has suffered because of the 2009-2011 recession.
Not coincidentally the majority of Savvi Formalwear stores are located on the west coast where nearly 20% of the formal wear transactions occur. In these 35 stores, Savvi Formalwear is trying to lure as many of the two million brides that get married every year to their stores and services as possible.
SOURCE: IBIS World Report, Formal Wear and Costume Rental in the U.S., May 2012
Savvi Formalwear’s campaign, named SavviOne, included weekly mail drops across the U.S. and Canada to promote formal wear to couples planning their weddings. Using the power of personalization, Savvi Formalwear significantly increased the engagement and conversions in its multi-channel promotional campaign, according to Mark Morrow, president of Savvi Formalwear.
SOURCE: Case Studies, www.montagedigital.com
Bride Puts Money Toward Print Pieces Not Cake or Dress
While most brides can spend the majority of their wedding budget on elaborate centerpieces, cakes and designer dresses, bride Robin Nelson, who works in the printing industry, invested her wedding dollars in a cross-media wedding campaign.
Nelson used XMPie solutions to personalize each piece of her wedding communications from engagement announcements to her wedding invitations which included QR Codes®*
Nelson said the campaign enabled her to gather more information about each of her guests to organizing the wedding to taking advantage of technologies that count RSVPs and help brides budget for dinner, drinks, the rehearsal dinner and after-ceremony reception.
SOURCE: “Happily Ever After: A Cross-Media Wedding Campaign” by Robin Nelson, XMPie Blog, Oct. 12, 2011
With the use of variable data printing, there was no confusion on head count at Nelson’s wedding. Nelson attributes this to her guests who updated their RURL (Response URL also called PURL for personalized URL) especially in regards to how many children who would be coming with them).
The information Nelson got from her guests through the landing page they responded to allowed her to stay within budget, update her guest list and create a seating chart.
Nelson also downloaded the XMPie Marketing Console iPhone app that allowed her to provide final head counts and meal preferences to her caterer and vendors through report on-the-fly report technology.
So while some brides like the visual trimmings (cakes, bridesmaid’s gifts, etc.), savvy brides are tapping into VDP and digital technology to make their wedding planning less stressful and more personalized to all involved.
*QR Codes are a registered trademark of Denso Wave.
May 16th
When a Dallas-based advertising agency, VLG, needed to engage prospects, it opted to show off its interactive technology through a sitelet or mini-site. The sitelet used a mock company called Crescent Bluffs to demonstrate the amount of time VLG could engage the prospect in the demo.
I was engaged for 1 minute 41 seconds. I took VLG’s bait of virtually opening a hotel door to a room with a virtual key on the screen. I was then asked to meet them in the lobby and then in the restaurant to have a virtual lunch; and at the end of the lunch a virtual note appeared on the screen announcing how long our business courtship lasted. VLG then asked me on the screen if I would be interested in learning how to conduct my own sitelet campaign to create new business for my company.
VLG’s campaign, Accept the Invitation, began by mailing a hotel napkin and faux hotel key with a note that read, “Let’s Meet.” The note sent prospects to a mini or microsite for a faux hotel named Crescent Bluffs. You can walk through the prospect experience here.
Because of sitelet successes such as VLG’s, other agencies and companies are using sitelets to launch a product, provide support functions and for targeted advertising campaigns. By using a separate domain name, you can choose a unique descriptive URL that pertains specifically to the campaign.
Flash, online databases and advanced programming can be combined to create powerful customer support tools. It is possible to preload your existing offline data or structure an entirely new database.
Another key benefit of using a targeted sitelet approach is that you do not have to significantly modify your existing company website for a specific campaign. You will want to integrate links and content for maximum exposure, but this is significantly easier than modifying website navigation and page structure.
How can you use mini-sites to bring in business?
May 14th
Awards make nice office decorations and offer bragging rights, but they mean nothing if the work behind them didn’t achieve pre-set objectives. Nine times out of 10 those objectives are financially focused – more customers, more sales, more donations, more buy in, more attendance and more orders.
Mail Print earned five AMBIT awards at the Kansas City Direct Marketing Association AMBIT awards dinner March 2013 because we know how to generate financially imperative results.
Mail Print is proud to be a fifth-year, multiple award recipient for generating measurable, quantifiable results consistently.
Mail Print earned four AMBITS in 2012, four in 2011, three AMBITS in 2010, and four AMBITS in 2009. More importantly, we’ve generated millions and millions of dollars in revenues for our clients (and ourselves) over the past five years.
Multi-channel Marketing – Connect Magazine & Corporate Blog (2012 Silver AMBIT)
For its multi-channel marketing effort sharing invaluable content with its clients through a print magazine, digital newsletter and corporate blog, Mail Print received a silver AMBIT in the Business Integrated Marketing category. This effort by Mail Print attributed $1.3 million in new business and new opportunities for a return on investment of $41 for every $1 spent on the magazine.
Fundraising & Print Automation – Donor Receipt Program (2012 Silver AMBIT)
For its work helping Harvesters automate its donor receipt program, Mail Print received a silver AMBIT in the fundraising category.
In this campaign, Mail Print automated the donation acknowledgement of 72,000 donations a year and added additional fundraising solicitations into the program that as a result increased donations. The results were:
Special Event Planning – Direct Mail 3.0 Event (2012 Gold AMBIT)
Mail Print earned gold in the $2,000 and over event planning category. Mail Print’s 2012 open house and educational event, Direct Mail 3.0, demonstrated our newest technologies and value-added services upon the addition of the HP T200 Inkjet Web Press that makes longer-run variable data printing affordable. The outcomes of the event and facility tour were:
Cause Marketing Campaign for Harvesters (2012 Gold AMBIT & Biggest Bang for the Buck)
Mail Print also earned a gold AMBIT for it fundraising effort for Harvesters called the Set and Extra Plate Holiday Campaign.Rather than just sending a holiday card to clients, Mail Print tithed its time and talents to raise extra money for the shrinking Harvesters food pantry during the holidays.
By creating a mailing with a soft solicitation to donate, Mail Print ultimately generated $63,000 in donations for Harvesters. The initial mailing led clients to a personalized URL (PURL) that had a direct link to submit a donation as small as $10 that would be matched.
Social share buttons were heavily promoted that increased shares and donations.
The campaign earned a 10:1 return on investment and generated $63,000 in donations as part of the nonprofit cause marketing effort.
“Our customers are the ones to thank. If it wasn’t for their trust in our efforts we would never have had the opportunity to earn them these results. It just proves that a well thought out effort, with great partners reaps great rewards,” says Mail Print CEO Gina Danner.
Apr 30th
Do you feel like you’re constantly playing catch up? If so it’s particularly hard to stay ahead of trends. We can relate; thus the reason we’re posting a 2013 marketing trends piece in late April.
Take a breather and read the eight trends projected by Forbes and CIO Network magazines.
8 Marketing Trends Projected for 2013
#1 Businesses will pick and choose their social media platforms. Because businesses have had time to cut their teeth on social media and social media integration, they now have the confidence to align themselves with the platforms that make the most sense for the business. No longer will businesses feel obligated to be entrenched in all social media platforms. Doing so is nearly impossible and participating in all social networks is certainly not required to be successful in your niche. Pinterest works for fashion, photography, interior design and lifestyle businesses but not as well for manufacturers, municipalities, or musicians.
#2 Marketing strategies that simplify will soar. Because the world continues to move at a fast pace; accelerated even faster by 24/7 technology, any company that simplifies our lives or experiences wins more customers.
#3 Real-time marketing will replace campaign-based marketing. While theme-based marketing has ruled because it’s easy to plan around one theme that gets launched around a company-based timeline, it’s not very consumer-centered. Now that companies have married their customer relationship management systems with their online website orders, they have the data to launch trigger-based or real-time marketing that happens because an activity has taken place and merits another action being put into play to motivate the customer to take the next step.
During this year’s Super Bowl, Oreo used “real time marketing” to capitalize on the media attention that resulted when the Superdome experienced a blackout. Oreo had aired a TV ad earlier that night with a Twitter tie in that gained some new fans. When the blackout occurred Oreo leveraged their increased Twitter following by tweeting out a relevant picture reminding them that “you can still dunk in the dark.”
SOURCE: Oreo Cookie; Power out? No Problem
This picture went viral almost immediately and at last count has been retweeted over 16,000 times.
#4 Marketing success will be measured by sales. Instead of measuring lead generation, opportunity costs, click throughs and dozens of other metrics, marketing’s worth to a company will be weighed against sales growth.
#5 Mobile marketing gets taken seriously. Because more people purchased smart phones than PCs last year, mobile marketing will truly get its fair share of the marketing spending pie. While 90% of global marketing have a mobile site, only 20% of them integrate mobile strategies into their overall marketing plan.
SOURCE:“5 Surprising Marketing Trends for 2013,” Forbes, Jan. 23, 2013.
#6 Digital marketing agencies will double. In an attempt to manage their various online and social activities, small businesses are turning to digital marketing agencies. The demand will drive more digital agencies from owner-operated to consultants to creative boutiques.
SOURCE:“Follow the Money: Digital Marketing Trends for 2013,” Rob Eleveld, CIO Network, Dec. 20, 2012.
#7 All marketing campaigns will be integrated marketing campaigns. Do you remember 20 years ago when advertising agencies started calling themselves integrated marketing agencies to show that they were all inclusive of strategies such as direct mail, merchandising, public relations as well as advertising? Today if you produce a direct mail campaign, it would be foolish not to integrate the campaign by using a trackable 800 phone number, QR Code® or landing page (aka microsite).
#8 Google will start charging to access its analytics. In 2012 Google spent lots of money improving its analytics solutions and has put itself in a position to begin charging for the data it collects and stores. You might see this as early as 2014.
SOURCE:”Follow the Money: Digital Marketing Trends for 2013,” Rob Eleveld, CIO Network, Dec. 12, 2012
Do any of these eight predictions surprise or worry you? Tell us why in the comments below. We’re proud to say that 100% of our campaigns are integrated or multi-channel campaigns and 85% are variably printed.
Apr 25th
IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, is rolling out an “IKEA Family” loyalty program. Specifically designed to keep the steam turned up on its integrated marketing channels (email, print, and social media).
IKEA has a loyal customer base of 3.6 million people who opted into IKEAs database to receive specials, flyers and its annual print catalog, which mails to 20 million people in the U.S. alone. Leontyne Green, IKEA North America CMO, says the catalog is the most important piece of the communications they produce.
The addition of the customer relationship program, IKEA Family, is meant to fill in the gaps of communications and build loyalty systematically. IKEA already has one million people signed up for the loyalty program.
IKEA Family provides discounts on in-store food and drink, access to seminars and events, member savings, and entry into gift card drawings.
SOURCE:“IKEA CMO at home with integrated mix,” Direct Marketing News, May 01, 2012, by Allison Schiff.
The Canadians Launch of IKEA Family
Rather than doing the trite thing of offering a free toaster, barbeque or CD player, IKEA Canada grew its IKEA family enrollment by giving something that was relevant to the brand, according to Judy Elder, managing director of Toronto-based Ogilvy & Mather Direct.
Customers received a package containing a tape measure, IKEA magazine full of how-to tips, a catalog, large format calendar and a punch-and-munch discount card for the company’s in-store food court. Numbers aren’t in, but sign ups and shoppers coming to the membership desk at the stores has increased.
Putting Marketing Frosting on the Cake with Social Media
Green is also championing one of IKEA’s first forays into social media by launching its “Bring Your Own Friends” promotion. IKEA North America is leveraging its 430,000 Facebook fans by asking them to BYOF (bring your own friends) for a full day of freebies, discounts and storewide perks, while at the same time raising $50,000 for the Save the Children cause.
IKEA’s marketing approach of cool product packaging compliment its ultra low prices. The combination of cool products and low prices has enabled IKEA to endure the recession even though 80% of its sales are in crisis-hit Europe.
SOURCE:“What are the Secrets to IKEA’s Success?” Tom White, tutor2U, March 01, 2011.
IKEA Takeaways
IKEA’s endurance through hard times, upward growth, and phenomenal fan base as indicated by its opt-in database, shows the company’s operational and marketing strategies are working. Here’s what it is doing right.
Not caving to pressure to go public, IKEA maintained low prices by sticking to their private roots. Less red tape leaves more time for IKEA workers to go through rolls of packing tape, shipping even more furniture across the Continents.
Apr 23rd
Other than identifying a known brand name and automatically knowing the size of the company, have you ever thumbed through a publication or web portal, become impressed by a company’s logo or tagline, only to learn that this company wasn’t nearly as large as you thought? It happens to me all the time.
I see polished ads or brands in business publications or at blogger sites. I then check out their web traffic at Compete, or look up their staff page on their website to see how large they are. I then acknowledge that they’re pulling off such a fabulous branding being the small fish in a big pond.
Moresource Plays Full Out with Ad Campaign
There is something very classy, catchy and memorable about an ad series done well. Moresource, a Columbia, Mo. based human resource company, gets my kudos for executing a successful ad series in the Kansas City Chamber business magazine, KC Business.
I liked that the owner of this three-person firm, Kat Cunningham featured herself with a client in each ad, used a QR Code®, included both a mention of Facebook and Twitter on her ad. She also stepped up by running a full-page ad, and obviously paid for a professionally designed ad and logo.
How Your Small Business Can Look Bigger than You Are
While it’s not always easy to win customers from larger competitors, technology has leveled the playing field and made it possible.
#1 Re-target your online ads vs. overspending for paid search.
Re-targeting lets you focus your ads exclusively on people who have already engaged with you online. You can re-target ads to people who have opened an email, searched for keywords or been on your site and left without buying anything. Site re-targeting is effective because these people are already interested in your products or services.
#2 Don’t cut corners on image or execution.
The quickest way to look small and amateurish is to put something into the marketplace that is poorly designed, poorly worded or filled with grammatical errors. If you’re going to send a postcard, make it the best designed card, on the best paper with the best call to action imaginable. If you’re going to run an ad campaign, make sure you develop the best creative, best frequency needed for results, and test all the back-end components such as the landing page URL, QR Code (that it scans and bridges your prospect to a site that further engages them), and best greeting upon their action. Does someone answer the phone before the third ring? Who is in the loop of the campaign and can answer questions intelligently? Does the eReport download without glitches once the prospect hands over the required lead info?
#3 Don’t build it, buy it.
You can launch a professional looking website quickly and without the absorbent costs of hiring programmers. Services such as Weebly or Yola have helped many businesses launch for a few dollars a month. Their drag, drop, type and upload technology further levels the playing field for all businesses and budgets.
Need an e-commerce store? Use Shopify.com or SquareSpace. Need to accept payments? Paypal is the answer. Want to provide live customer service online? Consider BoldChat. Chances are what you need already exists and can be accessed through open source, monthly lease, or shared software.
SOURCE:“Look Like a Big Company Without Spending Big Money,” by Scott Gerber, Nov. 30, 2011, Small Business Advocate.
#4 Don’t cut corners on your print collateral.
Find a graphic designer and print partner who produced the image materials of companies you admire and work with them to build your brand. Even in a digital world, you still need business cards, letterhead, pocket folders and mailing labels. Don’t short-change your business by trying to penny pinch you’re way through your collateral. If you and your three biggest competitors had materials sitting on the table in front of the customer of your dreams, who would they pick and why based on image alone?
QR Code is a registered trademark of Denso Wave.
Apr 16th
Source: DMNews.com
Mail is still first class in the eyes of 73% of consumers in America who still prefer to receive direct mail for brand communications. So despite all the press and pixels that social and email marketing get, direct mail is still tops in the eyes of consumers.
Despite the exposure of digital channels, direct mail is expected to grow 1.4% annually for the next five years to $13.8 billion.
Personalization Makes Direct Mail Even Hotter
Companies that gather data on customers who segment the information into relevant marketing communications delivered via variable data printing win big with double-digit responses.
If you are a marketing leader who invests in direct mail as a channel, do you consistently ensure what you send out is variably printed and designed? Consumers expect communications to be relevant across all channels, including direct mail.
Discover credit card company targets its list based on different customer attributes and then tags each piece with a personalized invitation number. “Direct mail is a great way for us to target consumers,” says Laks Vasudevan, Discover director of acquisition. “It’s our most targeted platform.”
Pull the Trigger
DSW sends personalized birthday postcards with offers to its 20 million plus rewards members. Who wouldn’t want $10 off a new pair of shoes as a gift to self?
And there’s something special about getting a real card with physical value versus a mass email with fashion tips, according to Kelly Cook, DSW’s Senior Vice President of Marketing.
When the company tested sending birthday coupons via email, it didn’t perform nearly as well as direct mail.
Give Your Customer What They Want When They Want It
Long gone are the days of sending one universal offer to everybody. For instance, I recently received a special offer for a college loan for my children from my bank. Yet, I don’t have children. I know the marketing team at my bank and I know they have access to some very sophisticated database tools to monitor my account activity and have done a lot of data mining, they failed to connect with me as a valued customer.
Give your customers the perks they want when they want and don’t delay. With today’s 24/7 marketing automation systems, there’s no excuse.
SOURCE:Direct Mail Advertising in the U.S., October 2012, research report by IBISWorld.
SOURCE:“Direct Mail, Evolved,” by Dianna Dilworth of Direct Marketing News, March 01, 2013.
Mar 19th
Remember how fun it was as a kid to dig into a box of Cracker Jacks® caramel popcorn and get that treasured prize inside the box? Well history repeats itself with Alo’s Free Music in Every Bottle campaign.
Alo, makers of an aloe vera health drink, have a marketing tagline — Goodness From Inside Out ™. I like their juice drinks and occasionally pay the premium price of $2.50 a bottle to treat my taste buds to something “pure” for a change.
Now Alo has developed a multi-channel marketing campaign to enhance the user experience by adding a QR Code® on each bottle that allows you to download an MP3 compatible song that they deem as music made for the flavor.
After downloading the song off my bottle, I received this email from the company:
Hello friend!
Goodness has arrived. Download your ALOtone track to your desktop and drag it into your iTunes. You can also take it on-the-go by syncing your iTunes with your iPhone. We think music is best enjoyed with friends, so share it with everyone and press play.
Download your free ALOtone™ here:
http://m.ALOdrink.com/mail/Optimistic_Bloom_(ALO_Enrich)_ALOtone.mp3
Always feel free to contact us or say hi at http://ALOdrink.com or http://Facebook.com/ALOdrink
Free Music in Every Bottle
Surprisingly, I believe the company has nailed this one. When I purchased a bottle of Alo Enrich, the pomegranate and cranberry flavored Alo, I was compelled to download the free music “for my mind.” The iTunes compatible song, Optimistic Bloom, was a new age bubbly rendition that really did remind me of drinking the Alo juice that contains small, round alovera pulp that bursts on your tongue when your drink the beverage.
Alo is milking its campaign for all its worth with a PR and media blitz and goes the extra mile by including marketing copy on its bottles that promote the campaign and drink-specific song.
The ALOtones are marketed as “taking you to another place combined with an enhancing mix of pomegranate, cranberry and aloe vera. Together, they’re crafted to promote positive thinking and take on free radicals with a fresh boost of musical Optimism.”
The company describes its new multi-channel marketing combination of QR Codes, packaging and song as the “Free Music in Every Bottle” campaign. I call it pure brilliance and one of the first QR Code campaigns that makes sense, rewards the consumer with a true treat of value, and in addition to keeping them purchasing the premium drink, they probably will chat it up among their friends, fellow yogis, runners, or health nuts in their circles.
Congrats to Alo for its innovative marketing and award for the Best Functional Drink Consumer Campaign at the Beverage Innovation Functional Drinks Awards last year.
QR Code is a registered trademark of Denso Wave.
Cracker Jacks® is a registered trademark of Frito-Lay
Mar 14th
Two years ago in April, Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission saw a dramatic drop in donations simultaneously with seeing a dramatic increase in homeless cases.
Based on advice from its marketing agency, it learned that the days of single-channel marketing were over. Donors now function in a multi-channel mode. Even if a direct mail acquisition piece is sent with a response mechanism, 40% to 60% of donors will elect to do further research online, according to Masterworks.
According to a 2010 study by Convio, most nonprofits continue to apply a traditional direct mail centric acquisition model to target Baby Boomers and other younger donors who make it onto available rental lists. For many, the answer has been to augment their direct mail with an online push. Internet fundraising has grown strongly, but most major mailing nonprofits have reported almost a 20% decline in new donor acquisition over the last five years. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”
Reversing Dwindling Donations by Pulling Out All the Stops
Union Gospel Mission built a multi-channel campaign to reverse the trend of declining donations. By building a campaign that included radio, direct mail, print (posters and press releases), promotional items, telemarketing, email, and landing pages, Union Gospel Mission grew donations by 2% and has continued this increase year after year.
The campaign slogan Union Gospel Mission crafted was “One Meal…One Hope.” One meal spoke to the needs of the poor and homeless while one hope offered the outcome donors wanted – a promise of a future through the mission’s work rebuilding broken lives.
SOURCE:Masterworks, Seattle-based integrated marketing firm
SOURCE:The Next Generation of American Giving, Convio, Edge Research, Sea Change Strategies, March 2010
The direct mail letter solicitation spelled out clearly how far the donor’s dollars would go in helping the homeless – $1.98 would feed one person and $19.20 would feed 10 people.
The landing page you see below helped put a face to the cause by thanking the donor for feeding Don and turning his life around by getting him off the streets and back into society and into church.
Multi-Channel Campaign Generates Huge Lift
Union Gospel Mission’s campaign exceeded expectations by making 7 million impressions. Website traffic to the mission grew 57% at a time when other missions were losing traffic and seeing income declines. Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission grew its donation by 2% and continues to see this upward trend now that it’s using multi-channel campaigns.
Six Rules of Multi-Channel Marketing
Are you implementing multi-channel marketing programs in your organization or nonprofit? If so are you sticking to these six requirements outlined by The Nonprofit Times below?
Feb 19th
No customer wants to hear all messages via email; via direct mail; via social; via traditional media. You get the gist.
Today’s preferred channels for communication have created new consumer behaviors. And consumers prefer different channels of communication depending on personal preferences. This means to effectively communicate one-on-one with any customer you need print plus digital communications.
According to Barbara Pellow, Director of InfoTrends, 2013 is the year of print plus. And though print spending is expected to decrease 6.2% over the next two years, it still makes up 30% of the marketing spending. Meanwhile it’s no surprise mobile spending is predicted to increase 8.8% and online/web communication spending to rise 4.9% over the next two years.
Pellow says these spending shifts present an opportunity for printers and chief marketing officers (CMOs) to become trusted advisors in helping clients or companies understand how to best spend and blend their available marketing dollars.
While survey after survey confirms that most marketers are shifting funds out of their print and mail budgets to online or out of their direct mail budgets into email, you don’t see the cross-marketing or multi-channel marketing blending that’s occurring in the marketplace.
In an InfoTrends study, Understanding Vertical Markets: Enterprise Communication Requirements, more than 1,000 companies and 500 employees were surveyed. In the chart below, you’ll see the strategy behind blending print and digital channels.
SOURCE: Understanding Vertical Markets; Enterprise Communications Requirements, Info Trends, 2013.
Digital + Traditional = Unified Marketing
Unified Marketing,™, coined by Dr. Augustine Fou, helps to visualize customer touchpoints across all marketing channels and across all stages of the customers’ purchase funnel to identify redundancies or gaps and thus optimize the mix of media and tactics.
Dr. Fou illustrates how marketing has evolved from push to pull (outbound to inbound marketing) in his ecosystem and touchpoints slideshare. He consults with CMOs on how to reallocate dollars across both traditional and digital channels to most efficiently impact business goals. Actually he’s made a science of doing so.
Dr. Fou’s scientific approach to identifying gaps in the sales funnel and then selecting the right tactics across all channels enables CMOs to visualize where they are overspending and then reallocate dollars rather than just arbitrarily moving marketing dollars from traditional to digital media.
“This is not just a ‘digital thing’ or a ‘traditional thing’ any more,” says Fou. “The right tactics are chosen based on insights about what bits of information customers need – their missing links – and what channels and tactics would be most effective in addressing these missing links.”
SOURCE: 2013 Really is the Year of Print Plus, What They Think, Barbara Pellow, January, 31, 2013.