Setting Expectations for Personalized Print

There is not doubt — we love personalized print. We love it because it works. What’s important, however, is understanding why it works. Personalized print doesn’t boost response rates simply because it’s driven by data.

When you look at the case studies and Webinars for these campaigns, you will often see phenomenal response rates.  In one report, they ranged from 6% to 75%, with an average of 21%. These are some powerful numbers. However, in order to understand why and how individual campaigns achieve such high numbers and whether yours is likely to do the same, you need to ask certain questions.

• What was the application? Different applications tend to bring different response rates.
• What kind of mailing list did the marketer start with? Highly targeted, moderately targeted, or undifferentiated lists will yield different results.
• Did recipients have a previous relationship with the company?
• What is the value of the product?
• Did per-order value go up with personalization, and if so, by how much?
• How is the marketer evaluating success (on a campaign-by-campaign basis or lifetime customer value)?

The answers to such questions can have a dramatic impact on ROI. For example, if you are asking respondents to log into a personalized URL to fill out a survey or provide information to a company they already do business with, you can expect higher response rates than if you are doing a prospecting campaign.

So before setting your expectations for your next personalized print mailing, talk to us about your goals, your expectations, and the data you are working with. Setting realistic expectations is a critical component to making your 1:1 print program a success.

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

If you try to do something and fail, you are vastly better off than if you had tried nothing and succeeded

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