Get Started with Print Personalization

Personalized print marketing gets results, but what if you’re a newcomer to the game? How do you get started? If you want to begin sending your customers relevant, personalized messages, here are three questions that will get you off to a great start. 

1. What are your goals?   

What are the goals of your campaign? Be specific. “To increase sales” isn’t sufficient. If you’re an auto dealership, your goal might be to get customers to schedule their 50,000-mile scheduled maintenance. For a bookstore, it might be to get customers to attend a book signing by a local author. Identify the specific action you want the customer to take. 

2. What data do you have?   

Do you have a customer database? If so, what’s in it? Do you have names and addresses only? Email addresses, past purchase history, or other demographics? Or do you need to start from scratch? If you need help understanding what data you have and how to use it, let us take a look. Once we understand what you’ve got, we will know whether you’re ready to start designing your personalized campaign, and if not, we can advise you in purchasing lists or appending your data to give you more fields to work with. 

3. Who’s your audience?  

Know your target audience. If you are selling women’s spa treatments, you don’t want the message to go to the men in your database unless you are prompting them to buy gifts for their wives. Likewise, you aren’t going to say “thanks for being a valued customer” to someone who hasn’t purchased from you in two years. You need to decide what cut of your database (or your target list) is going to receive your message. 

Once you know how all the elements come together, you can begin crafting a personalization strategy that will reap big results. Need help? Give us a call. That’s why we’re here. 

What Could a Redesign Do for You?

When was the last time you took a close look at the design of your marketing collateral? How about your statements and invoices? Is there unused white space that you could use to personalize offers and maximize sales with cross-sells? Could highlight color improve response time? Where could you add customization or demographic segmentation? Let’s look at three redesigns that reaped huge benefits:

• Virginia-based First Market Bank decided to redesign its customer loyalty notifications to make better use of its white space. It added personalized messaging and filled this space with 1:1 cross-sells and upsells based on customers’ purchase history. Under the new design, members averaged one more store visit per week than regular loyalty program customers and spent 11% to 17% more per week than those in the regular program.
  
• Ameriprise Financial eliminated its bulky, static mailers and replaced them with streamlined, personalized statements that contain only information relevant to each recipient. Not only did customers have a much easier time understanding the new mailers, but Ameriprise’s bottom line benefited from the ability to incorporate cross-sell and upsell messaging as well.
  
• The State of California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) wanted to make its tax statements easier to understand. It redesigned its statements to incorporate highlight color and personalized messaging that explained to individual taxpayers why they were receiving the notice, how late their payments were, and the due date. Within the first month, the FTB saw a tenfold improvement in response time. Clearer information also reduced the number of inquiries to the FTB’s call center, resulting in $100,000 in savings—and that was just the first month.

What could a redesign do for you? How could making better use of your white space and use techniques like personalization and highlight color to make your marketing materials more effective, improve response time, and boost your profitability? Let us help you brainstorm some great, creative ideas. 

3 Ways to Use Psychology to Boost Results Today

Studies have shown that simple techniques related to human behavior can boost the results of marketing campaigns significantly. Here are three techniques that are particularly simple and easy to implement. 

1. Set minimums. 

Set a minimum purchase or, if you’re fundraising, a minimum donation. In research done for the American Cancer Society, Robert Cialdini found that, by adding a minimum to the call to action increased donations by 78%. 

2. Use the power of labels. 

People tend to be become who they are labeled to be. If you label someone a “power donor,”or if you’re a bakery, a “strudel lover,” for example, recipients tend to see themselves this way and act accordingly.  This is supported by a behavioral study examining voting patterns. Researchers found that people randomly labeled as “politically active” were 15% more likely to vote. 

3. Make it urgent. 

It’s easy to delay making a purchase, so reduce attrition by adding deadlines to motivate your audience to action. “Three days only!” is more powerful than “Act now!”  

It might be hard to comprehend how such simple wording changes could pay such huge dividends, but repeatedly, the studies show that they do. 

Want to prove it for yourself? Contact us and let us help you transforming your marketing using these simple behavioral techniques. 

Based on data drawn from “10 Ways to Increase Conversions Using Psychology [Infographic]” from HelpScout. 

Can’t Touch This: 5 Reasons Online Can’t Replace Print

In a world in which people have already checked their email, logged into Facebook, and responded to a dozen text messages before they drink their first cup of coffee, what is the enduring allure of print? Let’s look at five reasons print marketing remains the anchor of any great multichannel marketing program. 

1. Print is beautiful. It doesn't matter how gorgeous your JPGs are, a beautifully printed piece will blow away your screen graphics any time. Print has a richness, depth, and allure that mobile devices and laptops can’t match. 

2. Print communicates beyond the subject line. When you communicate by email, recipients can't see beyond the subject line unless they open the message. With clear envelopes, windows, and exterior envelope printing, you can communicate a tremendous amount of information in print before recipients even open the envelope. 

3. Print plays well with others. Today's complex marketing environment often requires multiple touch points.  Not everyone will respond to your message through the same channel or at the same time. Print remains a critical channel in the overall mix. 

4. Print influences buying decisions. Marketers once thought that, as e-commerce became mainstream, printed catalogs would fade away. History indicates otherwise. Surveys consistently find that consumers who receive printed catalogs are more likely (in one study, twice as likely) to make online purchases at the retailer’s Web site as those who do not. 

5. Print is credible. Open your e-mail. How much junk email do you receive? Unless it comes from a known brand, people are skeptical of claims made by email alone, and for good reason. Print still carries greater weight and authenticity than digital marketing. Combine that with personalization and you have a communication people feel they can trust.

Print remains a critical component in today’s fast-paced, “what’s in it for me?” world. While e-marketing is a necessary component in our multi-channel marketing environment, print — particularly 1:1 print — brings benefits that online channels just can’t touch.