Don’t Overlook Your Employees

When it comes to personalized printing, marketers’ primary focus is on customers . . . as well it should be.  The use of data to increase relevance, drive conversions, and increase audience engagement is one of the primary benefits of this technology. But have you ever thought about using the same benefits of personalized print communications to serve your own internal audience—your employees? 

1to1 Magazine recently published an interesting article called “Beyond the Suggestion Box” talking about the importance of employee engagement. While the topic might sound mundane, it is actually a critical issue. Employee engagement and company profitability are closely tied. The more engaged a company’s employees are, the more profitable it tends to be. 

Despite this connection . . . 

• Only one-quarter of employees at large companies are highly engaged (The Temkin Group)
• 18% of full-time workers in the U.S. are actively disengaged in their work; and 
• 52% are not involved in, enthusiastic about, or committed to their work (Gallup)

These low levels of engagement should be a real concern to U.S. businesses. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to improve the engagement of your employees within your organization. If engagement is already high, these same steps can help it grow even more. 

Ask their opinion.  Use printed surveys or for topics on which employees may want credit for their input and ideas, you may want to use personalized URLs.

Send individualized cards and gifts on birthdays, anniversaries (including anniversary of their employment start date), and other special occasions. 

Publicize how their input and the input of others is being acted upon. Use newsletters, posters, and other print communications to spread the word and let them know that their opinions being heard. 

Personalized printing is a valuable tool for communicating with your most important audiences. Your employees should be one of them! 

Link to the original article: http://www.1to1media.com/view.aspx?docid=34457

Make It Funny - Make It Stick

Is your marketing funny? Maybe it should be. (At least sometimes.) Humor is a great way to differentiate your product or service, making your message memorable and increasing your visibility. At the same time, you must balance humor with marketing information. Otherwise your prospects will remember the gag and forget the product. 

Here are some tips for giving your business-as-usual communications the power of funny. 

Keep humor in its place. Make your product or service front and center. Use humor to get the customer to stick around long enough to hear your message, but the laughter should enhance your marketing goals, not overwhelm them.

Funny is subjective. Different demographics find humor in different things, so know your audience’s funny bone. Should it be slapstick or sophisticated? Laugh-out-loud or subtly clever?

Print can be funny, too. In print, humor can be visual, so the biggest laughs might come from how punctuation paces a sentence or how a graphic makes the reader do a double take. 

Don’t take aim at your target customers. The joke is always funnier if it is on someone else. Humor should never come at the expense of the person holding the piece. 

Remove the color. Keep the color in your fonts and graphics. In your marketing, stay away from off-color jokes and innuendo. Keep it clean.

Follow cross-cultural rules, even at home. We live in a multi-cultural world, and cultural gaps can exist anywhere there is diversity. Be wary of colloquialisms and variations in the meaning of words, even in different geographic areas of your own country.

Funny marketing attracts customers by creating a positive association with your brand. When used correctly, humor is an important tool for getting your message heard. Don’t knock-knock it until you’ve tried it.

Learning the Basics of Great Campaigns

1:1 printing. Personalized URLs. Multi-channel marketing. Today’s marketing strategy is a lot to absorb. Not surprisingly, when clients are transitioning from traditional marketing to personalized, on-demand, or multi-channel strategies, one of the questions we most often get is, "How do I learn all this? How do I get started?” 

First, we can help you. That’s part of our job. But if you want to delve into the learning process on your own, there are some simple steps you can take. Start by remembering than any campaign is made up of multiple elements. These elements include (but are not limited to) . . . 

• Business objective
• List (in-house or purchased, level of demographic refinement)
• Additional targeting (segmentation, personalization)
• Marketing offer
• Creative (graphics and copy)
• Programming (if necessary)
• Integration with other marketing channels (email, social, mobile, web, out of home)
• Results tracking 

With these elements in mind, every time you attend a trade show event, read a case study, attend a webinar, or peruse a blog post or magazine article with customer stories, do a quick mental rundown on this list. Pick out each of the elements, identify how each was handled in the campaign (whether well or poorly), and notate how the details of the implementation likely impacted the results. 

Go through each case study or customer story strategically and methodically, filling out the mental checklist on each one. Think of it as a self-paced course. Even after the first dozen or so, you will start to see patterns come together and have those “Ah, ha!” moments. You will start to see how the elements synergize, where certain elements are missing, or where poorly implemented (or under-implemented) elements caused the campaign to stumble. 

Try it. You might be surprised how quickly this simple exercise can pay off in spades. 

How to Create Effective Sales Literature

Looking to freshen up your sales literature? Think carefully and create a plan. Sales literature stands in for you when you’re not around, carrying your brand identity and reputation to the marketplace. It plays a critical role in your business and needs to be planned out carefully.

Start by investing in good design. Eye-catching layouts grab attention, and provocative headlines and compelling text convince the reader to hear you out. Keep your production cutting edge and the marketing content fresh. If you cut corners on printing or circulate out-of-date information, your prospects might subconsciously conclude that you produce cheap, outdated products too.

Tie each printed piece to a goal in your overall marketing plan. Is the objective to drive new sales, cross-sell to existing customers, or communicate better with your stakeholders? The appropriate format (postcard, circular, product data sheet, package insert, newsletter) will naturally follow. Combinations of different elements—paper types, colors, repetition—can produce powerful subliminal effects, so it is important that you work with a professional designer. 

Consider portability. An oversized piece might gain attention, but what will make someone pick up your piece and take it with them and then pass it along to others?

Communicate directly and succinctly about what you are offering, what is in it for the reader, and what action the reader should take. It’s tempting to overload your documents with every capability and feature you offer, but this can overwhelm and disengage someone who is just learning about you. As they move through the sales funnel, you can introduce more complex printed collateral. At this stage, however, the content should be just intriguing enough and the call to action persuasive enough to inspire the reader to initiate further discussion.

Even the best sales collateral isn’t going to close the sale by itself. What it will do is provide outstanding sales support, reinforce your message, and stay behind as your brand messenger. So pay attention to your sales literature and give it the attention it deserves. 

QR Codes Being Scanned at Home

Want to hear a surprising statistic? New research by Nielsen (“Mobile Shopping Report” 2013) shows that two-thirds of smartphone shoppers and four out of five shoppers on tablets do their shopping at home.  

That’s right — they are using their mobile devices to shop right from their couches.  

Not only this, but these “mobile at home” shoppers are more likely than not to make their actual purchases from home, too. Ninety-five percent of tablet shoppers and 72% of smartphone shoppers who make a purchase do so from home, according to the study.

This is yet another reason to incorporate QR Codes with back-end shopping content or links into your printed marketing materials. 

In fact, in a 2011 MobiLens study that is still reflects consumers’ mobile behavior today, comScore found that 60% of people scanned QR Codes from home. The most popular hours of scanning? Midday and early evening between the hours of 3 p.m and 7 p.m.

So if you think QR Codes are not relevant to your marketing because your customers mostly shop at home (where they might prefer other channels, such as print catalog or laptop), think again. In fact, QR Codes could become one of your most powerful tools for motivating shoppers to do a little retail therapy as they unwind and decompress from a hectic day at work.  

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/206585/most-mobile-shoppers-found-at-home.html

Scan this QR Code to go to Lakes Print's mobile website to learn the importance of mobile and how to incorporate QR codes into your print and mobile marketing strategy.

5 Reasons Print Still Rocks

Is print still relevant in today’s world of ubiquitous electronic media? Yes! Here are a few reasons not to overlook when you are planning your next marketing campaign.

1. Print adds a dimension to the media experience not possible with digital media.Print is warm and inviting. You can create dazzling special effects that make readers want to touch and feel your message thanks to a new generation of papers, inks, varnishes and coatings. It’s a tangible dimension that electronic media can’t impart.
   
2. Print is universally accessible.Printed documents don’t have batteries that run down, they can easily be read even in direct sunlight, and they can be read even in locations where wireless is not available, such as subway stations and airplanes.
   
3. Certain demographics don’t go online.Some demographic groups, particularly older consumers, simply prefer print collateral over digital options. In some cases, print may be the only way they research their options. Don’t overlook the disposable income of this demographic group!
   
4. Consumers are multi-channel.When looking to make a purchase, today’s media-savvy consumers seek multiple sources of information. Rarely will they use online only or print only. They seek out multiple media and compare and contrast responses. Print is a critical part of that mix.
   
   
5. Print is more trusted for high-dollar purchases.Consumers love electronic media for its immediacy, but research shows that they seek print when it’s time to buy. Web technologies provide quick answers, but the responses are often contradictory. Print shows that you found your message to be important enough to commit it to paper and you stand behind what you’re saying. 

Overlooking the role of print can prove fatal to a marketing campaign. If your objective is to inform, teach, persuade or entertain, print marketing is a must.