Personalized Marketing: It’s Mainstream

From personalized coupons arriving in the mailbox to “just for you” recommendations in the inbox, personalized marketing is everywhere.

In fact, in a study of more than 1,000 enterprises, InfoTrends found that not only is personalization occurring more frequently, but when marketers do send out personalized marketing pieces, those pieces have a higher level of complexity. There are more variable pictures and images. More variable blocks of text. More dynamic compositions of the sections of the marketing pieces.

When asked, “What percentage of your customer communications/marketing campaigns fit into the following categories?” InfoTrends found that 62% of campaigns are either fully personalized or segmented:

Audience-Targeting Approaches

Personalized (one to one)	29%
Segmented (one to few)	33%
Mass marketing (one to many)	38%

Source: Understanding Vertical Markets: Enterprises Communication Requirements (InfoTrends)

Think about that for a moment. Nearly two-thirds of campaigns are targeted, if not fully personalized. What does that mean for you? It means that if you are sending static mail pieces, you’re competing with marketers who are speaking (potentially to the same customers and prospects) on a personalized level.

If your competitors are personalizing and you are not, who do you think is going to get the most mind share? Even if your competitors aren’t personalizing today, they might be tomorrow. You want to get there and establish a relationship with those customers or prospects before they do.

Need help planning your next personalized campaign? Give us a call!

Putting 1:1 Printing to Work

When we think of 1:1 printing, we tend to think of dedicated marketing campaigns designed to increase response rates and boost revenues. But smart marketers are taking it even further. They are incorporating 1:1 printing into the very fabric of their customer communications. As they do, they are seeing bottom-line benefits.

Take the example of Disney Destinations LLC, a division of The Walt Disney Company. Like many marketers, when someone contacted Disney Destinations about its services (in this case, business-to-business customers looking to book a business meeting at one of its resorts), it used to overwhelm them with pamphlets with every option, whether relevant to the caller or not. The cost of printing and storing all of those materials was very high, and if any of the information changed, it had to be thrown away and reprinted.

Disney moved to a print-on-demand model for these customers, but this is more than a POD story.

Previously, Disney had utilized 1:1 printing to communicate with individual and family vacationers who booked resort packages. The project was so successful that it decided to use a similar model with B2B inquiries. Now, instead of sending out large, undifferentiated information kits, Disney creates 24-page, full-color, fully personalized information booklets specific to each inquirer's needs. Booklets are 100% variable, with 3,000 potential combinations of text and images, personalized with the prospect's company and meeting information.

The results? Phenomenal. Disney has cut printing and storage costs by 50%. Plus, it more than doubled its response and conversion rates.

Does all this happen automatically just because a marketer switches to 1:1 printing? No. Previously, Disney Destinations admits that it was not following up with inquiries effectively. So at the same time it switched to 1:1 printing, it created a dedicated sales follow-up team. The detailed information gathered for the 1:1 brochures allows the team to follow up more easily with current prospects, as well as with past customers who have become inactive. The resort is also blending in other customer contact vehicles, such as e-mail contacts and personalized URLs, both as follow-ups to inquiries and to generate new inquiries. Together, all of these efforts create a comprehensive approach to prospect communications and existing customer communications that is immensely profitable.

The moral of the story? For world-class marketers, 1:1 printing has become more than a type of marketing campaign. It has become a way to do business. What can you learn from them?

Better Copy Gets Better Results

When writing marketing copy for your direct mail, email, and other marketing communications, do you focus on features and benefits? If so, you might want to think again. Increasingly, marketers are using emotional and psychological triggers instead.

One of the gurus of marketing copywriting is Denny Hatch. In his e-book “Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button Copywriting,” he looks at seven triggers that tip readers over the edge and get them to act. These are fear, greed, guilt, anger, exclusivity, salvation, and flattery.

Let’s look at five of them more closely.

·      Fear is often used to sell insurance products. “What happens if there is a disaster? Will your family be protected?”

·      Anger is a powerful tool in fundraising. “How can millions of children go hungry in right here in America? Isn’t anyone doing anything about it?”

·      Guilt is a powerful motivator for selling to busy moms. “Don’t have time to cook dinner for your family? Our frozen dinners taste so much like homemade your kids will never know!”

·      Exclusivity is staple in selling to affluent consumers. “Become a Platinum member and enjoy exclusive benefits, including our prestigious ‘After Hours’ party on the aquarium grounds!”

·      Flattery appeals to those feeling they are missing out on the good life. “Treat yourself! Don’t you deserve the best?”

These five emotional hot buttons appeal to a wide variety of consumers and can motivate even the most reticent to pull the trigger. Sprinkle them throughout your marketing copy and watch the results pour in.

Direct Mail Bloopers

When it comes to successful personalization, everything hinges on the database. It’s critical to keep your data clean and up to date. Here are some hilarious stories of what happens when you don’t. These true tales are taken from LinkedIn’s Direct Mail discussion group.

• The California Department of Health sent a direct mailing to 50,000 residents who receive adult day care. The addresses were right, but the envelopes contained a gift for identity thieves. Recipients’ Social Security numbers were printed right on the envelopes!
• A direct mail house did not properly de-dupe its client’s mailing list. When the mailing went out, one hapless recipient ended up with several hundred pieces of identical mail!
• At one women's college, many alumni prefer to have their mailing names listed as “Mrs.,” such as “Mrs. John Smith.” During one campaign, the mail house dropped the titles in the NCOA process and ended up sending the mailing to many of the alumni’s husbands instead.
• When the U.K.'s national airline was creating its passenger database, someone thought it would be funny to expand the passengers’ initials into military titles. So R. A. Smith became Rear Admiral Smith. The airline chairman received several letters from recipients requesting that they receive backdated pensions based on their elevated titles. It was funny until the data company had to hand search and correct every single title within 24 hours. All 50,000 of them.
• During one holiday season, a purveyor of fine meats and other food specialty items dropped 20,000 catalogs with an 800 number to call for faster service. Unfortunately, the number was wrong. Recipients ended up calling a funeral home.

We hope you get a few laughs out these stories, but there is very serious reason for sharing them. Data handling isn’t funny business. Talk to us before your next mailing to make sure your data is in the best shape it can be. 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.  A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

Lana Turner

One-Two Punch Delivers Results

Want to increase the results of your direct mail campaigns? Try a combination of print and email. It’s a powerful “one, two” punch that can really deliver.

Why would having an email address make such a difference? Let’s look at three reasons.

• Customers who provide email addresses tend to be more engaged with your company. Not that providing the email address, in itself, makes the customer more engaged. It’s because they are more engaged that they are more likely to provide this information. An email address can be an indicator of engagement.
• Customers providing email addresses self-select themselves as being more receptive to your marketing.  By providing their email addresses, customers are telling you that they want to hear from you.
• Customers who provide their email addresses are more open to additional marketing “touches.” More touches means more results.

We see this two-step process producing results every day. By combining variable printing with email and an online registration process, one association, for example, was able to triple the attendance at its annual summer conference. In another example, a software manufacturer sent a follow-up email to non-responders to a print campaign, personalized using the same rules as the print mailer, and sales of its targeted products jumped 81%.

Of course, there are other elements to successful direct mail campaigns beyond using the dual punch of print and email. Still, this combination is a key aspect of many campaigns’ success. It’s no wonder that direct mail with email follow-up has become almost the de facto standard in multichannel marketing today.

Don’t have your customers’ email addresses? No worries. Web site registration, personalized URL campaigns and email list purchases are all techniques you can use to gather the missing information. Why not talk to us about expanding your next campaign to include email?

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."
--John D. Rockefeller

Colors Equal More Direct Mail Opens

Studies have shown that using color on the outside of your direct mail envelope equals higher open rates. In fact, one study found that 69% of people are more likely to open a mail piece with color text and graphics on the front than they are when the envelope is plain.*

Adding color can make a huge difference in your bottom line. Even if your conversion rate remains the same, by doubling the number of people who open your direct mail letter or package, you double the sales from that campaign.

How can you add color to your envelopes?

·        Graphics and images

·        Color banners

·        Company logos

·        Patterned backgrounds

·        Brightly colored indicia

·        Outlines of the state in which they live

These are simple changes that can yield big results. Why not try color on your next envelope and see what a difference it makes for you?

*Leflein Associates Mail Openability Study

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. 

Wayne Gretzky

Are Your Response Incentives and Marketing Goals Properly Matched?

When prospecting, many marketers use some kind of incentive to boost response. But let’s face it. Not all incentives are created equal. To be successful, you need to put as much thought into the incentive as you do into your list, your creative and your message. You also need to match the value of the incentive to how much the response is worth to you.

When one company wanted to add more value-added resellers, for example (something in which even bringing on one more could bring in millions over time), it offered a sweepstakes featuring a trip to the Caribbean. When another wanted to access high-level executives, it offered remote control cars personalized with the recipient’s name.

Just because your incentive has a high dollar value, however, doesn’t mean that it’s the right incentive. For example, you might not want to give away free digital cameras to a camera-savvy audience that most likely already has one — or three. Instead, you might want to offer something more unusual, such as a digital picture frame that attaches to a key ring.

Also keep in mind that an incentive doesn’t need to cost a lot to be highly motivating. One marketer used the “hook” during its Christmastime promotion of allowing respondents to help select the charity to receive its end-of-year donation. Others have given away free saplings to environmentally conscious prospects around Earth Day. The point is to match the incentive to your specific audience. One size doesn’t fit all.

Need some help with incentive ideas? Talk to us about getting the right match for your next campaign.

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

Go Bucks!!

Urban Meyer