Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Are You Benefitting from Personalized URLs?


Have you joined the ranks of marketers benefitting from personalized URLs? If not, why?  

Personalized URLs are a highly effective way to increase response rates and gather more information about your customers. 

Personalized URL campaigns use the ability of digital presses to create personalized URLs that send recipients to their own, fully personalized pages (www.bobsbuildings.com/john_smith.htm). There, recipients generally navigate a customized “mini-site” that includes a personalized landing page, a survey page, an information page, and a thank-you page. Once the user responds, the data is appended back into your database for use in future targeting. 

Although this sounds complicated, it isn’t. These applications can be template-driven, using something as simple as a mailing list. Setup time can be a matter of hours—or less. The magic is in the software.

While personalized URLs do require databases, they can be successful with as little as a mailing list. Campaigns often start with some kind of basic demographic or other segmentation, and once people respond, the software gathers the data and appends it back automatically so you can use it for more detailed targeting and personalization later. Thus, personalized URLs don’t require detailed marketing databases. They become gateways to creating them. 

Indeed, research shows that the more marketers learn from their personalized URL surveys, the more effective their campaigns become. In an analysis of its customers’ multi-channel marketing campaigns, for example, one personalized URL software supplier found that in 2009, marketers using its system achieved a 5.1% visit rate and 3.8% response rate on average. But in 2010, just one year later, they were achieving visit rates of 6.5% and response rates of 4.5%.

Personalized URLs are a terrific tool for generating responses and learning about your customers . . . and the more you use them (and learn from them), the more effective they become. 

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Use Psychology to Boost Sales!


Guess what? No one wants to buy your product or service. What they really want is an answer to one of their needs, wants, desires and fears. 

Here’s how you can put this to work for you: You can strengthen your market position by learning how these psychological factors, along with the psychological impact of your graphics and marketing message, affect your target audience. Change your strategy from marketing features and benefits to the promise that you can satisfy at least one of these psychological motivations and you will create a winning marketing strategy.

Say you are a manufacturer of cologne, and 90% of customers say that they purchased your product because it smells good. So you pour marketing dollars into promoting the best-smelling scent on the planet, but pallets sit unsold in your warehouse. Why? Because we often make purchases for emotional reasons, such as acceptance and association, then justify them with a rational explanation. The challenge for marketers is unearthing those secret reasons for making a purchase.

In the example above, the hidden impetus is that cologne makes the wearer feel more attractive. Change your marketing pitch from how good your cologne smells to how it fulfills the purchaser’s desire to be alluring and — voila! — the product flies off the shelves. 

The trick is to thread your marketing promise into every element, including product image, advertising and promotion strategy, product packaging and display, and even your pricing. Use the design and copy to quickly lead the reader to how the product can satisfy one of their needs, wants, desires, or fears. Graphics will have better recall than words, so choose images that are harmonious with your copy. 

You can create print marketing that is well-designed and well-written, but that still fails miserably if it’s not credible. Pair a good product or service with a focused marketing strategy based on an understanding of what truly motivates your customers, and you will dominate your market.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Personalizing Without Getting Too Personal


These days, consumers expect marketing offers to be targeted to their needs and preferences. If I like to sail, send me sailing coupons, not golf coupons. If I’m single, send me promotions on vacation trips to Italy or the Caribbean, not Disney World.

Personalization is a powerful way to gain long-term loyalty from customers who appreciate that you are sending them offers for products and services they actually want and need. But there are some warning stories out there, too. Take a hard-learned lesson from Target.

Newly expecting moms are loyal shoppers and voluminous buyers. Getting a foothold early is highly profitable and retailers know it.

That’s why Target has been scouring the information gathered from its credit card holders to figure out how to predict whether a woman is expecting, based on her purchasing patterns. Using what a woman buys and when, Target has been able to assign “pregnancy scores” (likelihood of pregnancy) and send suspected mothers-to-be direct mail pieces with coupons for products appropriate to the estimated stage of their pregnancies.

This is a great idea . . . except that some women may not want their pregnancies exposed. In one case, a teenager’s father became irate when his daughter started receiving offers for diapers and maternity clothing. He called his local Target store, furious. What were they trying to do? Promote teen pregnancy? But he was forced to apologize when he discovered that his daughter was expecting. The story blew up in the business publications—including Forbes, where it got 26,000+ Tweets and 28,000+ Facebook likes. 

So while Target has continued its scoring for likely new mothers, it has made its approach more subtle.
The moral of the story is, most customers want their offers to be personalized, but it’s best to be careful how you present them. After all, to quote an old adage, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
So how do you personalize an offer when the product could be sensitive? 

First is timing. A well-timed offer (such as a mortgage refinance offer timed to land just before a mortgage holder’s interest rate goes up) can be even more powerful than personalizing the text. Second is a more subtle use of context. Target changed its targeting to blend baby products in with other more generic products to avoid the appearance of profiling, even though it was.

When you’re personalizing, think about what you can learn from your customers that will help you create and time offers in a way that is most relevant to them. But also think about how you present the information. How you “serve it up” can be as important to your success as the offer that you actually make.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Keeping Great Customers On Board


You’ve sent out a terrific marketing campaign. You’ve received a superb response. You’ve converted prospects to buyers. Now what?

“What do you mean?” you ask.

After all, you got the sale. Customers love you. As long as you continue to provide good products, reasonable prices, and great customer service, they’ll stay your customers as long as you don’t mess things up.

That might sound reasonable, but in today’s competitive world, it doesn’t work that way. You’ve worked hard to get that customer, but just like any relationship, you have to put in effort to make it last.

Think about your car. You can’t just fill it with gas once a week and expect to keep it for 100,000 miles. You need to change the oil. Do routine maintenance. Otherwise, you’ll seize the engine or have to dump in thousands of dollars to fix problems that could have been prevented. Likewise, customers need attention and care if you want to keep them over the long haul. We might call this “customer
after-care.” 

This is one of the areas where 1:1 print communications can make a huge difference. There are some simple ways to keep customers happy, keep them engaged, and retain them over the long term.
Here are some ideas.

  • Customer newsletters. Tell customer stories. Talk about new products. Provide insight they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Speak to them by name and customize the content to be more relevant to their individual needs.
  • Customer satisfaction surveys. Ask them how you are doing. It’s a great way to let people know you value their business. Use personalized URLs to make this easy and append the data back into your marketing database automatically.
  • Personalized notes and cards. Do you know your customers’ birthdays? How about the date they first became customers? Send them personalized notes and cards as a way to let them know you care.
  • Tips & tricks postcards. Once in a while, offer some free advice. If you’re a landscaping company, you might suggest the easiest care perennials for the upcoming season. If you’re a real estate office, you might suggest the best neutral colors for resale.
  • Coupons & freebies. Send a coupon for a discount or a freebie “just because.” It continually re-engages your customers and helps them see the value in their relationship with you. 

Client retention is critical to your bottom-line success. Be a company that does this well, and you’ll reap the benefits of great brand recognition and long-term customer relationships.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Spice It Up!


Are you looking for ways to spice up your direct mail campaigns? Even if your response rates remain high, are you looking to freshen things up a little? Here are a few ways you can update your direct mailings and give them new appeal.

1. Update the package. 
Are you using the same envelopes you have for years? If so, try something different. Change the color. Change the size. Add a personalized teaser on the front (John, check this out!). If you are selling high-value products or services, consider really shaking things up with dimensional mail or novelty envelopes that look like UPS packages or USPS Priority Mail. 

2. Tweak your text. 
Still using the same marketing text from last year? Try another direction. If youve been using a dry, informational style, insert some humor.  If youve been sending short, punchy one-liners, try adding more informational text. 

3. Freshen up the images. 
How long have you been using that same picture of your headquarters? Is your head shot in the lower right-hand corner 10 years old? Have a photographer take a new company photo. Upload a current head shot with a fabulous smile. Or maybe you just want some new images as backgrounds or illustration. Todays selection of royalty-free imagery is professional, full of variety, and inexpensive. Try something new and see what happens! 

4. Add a new variable. 
If you are personalizing your mailings, why not add a new variable? If youve been personalizing by name and gender, add age bracket or income. This gives you a whole new way to relate to customers and increase the relevance of the message. Dont have the data? Adding variables can be as easy as a simple data append. You give us the names, we order the data. Its that simple. 

5. Try a new offer. 
What incentive have you been using to get people to respond? 15% discount? If so, try 10% or 25%. Go crazy and try BOGO. How are you encouraging people to log into their personalized URLs? Entrance into a sweepstakes for a gift card? Try a set of concert tickets instead.

Experiment with new approaches and see what works. Mixing things up also tells people you are a progressive company, always growing and looking to improve. So get creative. Step outside the box and see what happens.