Sell More by Educating Your Customers

Are most of your marketing campaigns used for direct sales? If so, why not mix it up? Try using your next mailer to offer advice or a helping hand instead. It’s a great way to sell products and deepen customer loyalty at the same time.

Just look at Home Depot. Why do you think it offers free seminars on do-it-yourself projects? Sure, seminars offer great advice, but they also generate additional sales for the home improvement giant. Attendees learn about a new product or technique, then while they are excited and motivated to try something new, they buy materials for completing one of those projects while they are right there in the store.

Think about all the products that get sold from a seminar on sponge painting, for example. Out of one event, the retailer might sell things like:

• paint
• sponges
• paint rollers
• rolling pans
• paint brushes
• edging tape
• edging blades

They will probably also sell a bunch of unrelated items such as light bulbs, lawn fertilizer, and kitchen drawer hardware pulls, too.   

Think about the products and services that you offer. What educational materials could be developed around those products? How could seminars, newsletters, even tips and tricks postcards promote sales indirectly by offering ideas and solutions and letting customers get excited enough to try them or develop their own ideas?

Let us help you develop a direct mail campaign promoting your next educational effort!

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606

Or visit our website here for more information.



Share on LinkedIn

5 Copy Tips for Better Direct Mail Response

Target Marketing recently published a terrific article on generating responses with direct mail. It doesn’t point to data-driven personalization, multichannel integration, or psychographic targeting, although all of these are important strategies. The article talks about the basics of effective marketing. We’ll summarize the points here and illustrate them with a TV commercial most of us will recognize: “Not You” from Realtor.com.

1. Create an either/or scenario.

In this scenario, there are two options: use your product, and things go well, use the other guy’s product and invoke disaster.

2. Use a real-world story to illustrate the consequences of the two choices.

Realtor.com does a great job with this. In the TV commercial, two women are looking at online pictures of the house one of them is buying. A third woman shows up and complains that this is the house she wanted. There are two primary characters here: you, who used Realtor.com to find and purchase the house quickly, and “not you” who didn’t use Realtor.com and missed out.  Whether we’re in the market for a new home or not, this is a scenario with which we can all relate.

3. KISS — keep it simple.

Direct mail isn’t the place to get technical. You are creating a scenario and tapping emotions to make your point. In the world of direct mail, simple sticks.

4. Focus on solving a problem.  

Realtor.com does this especially well. Problem: I don’t want someone else to get the house I want. Solution: Use Realtor.com.  Everyone understands this simple problem-solution scenario. 

5. Use images to evoke emotion.

In direct mail, you have a matter of seconds to convince the recipient that the piece is worth their time to pick up and read. People process visual information much more quickly than text, so use images to your advantage!

Direct mail is a powerful tool for getting a message into people’s hands quickly. Use these tips to make the most of the opportunity!

http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/how-to-generate-response-with-your-direct-mail/



Please give us a call at 440-946-0606

Or visit our website here for more information.

Share on LinkedIn

Why Foil Stamping?

Printed collateral, direct mail, and other printed marketing communications remain the bedrock of successful marketing campaigns, but their “look” is changing.

Consumers today, especially Millennials, are drawn to marketing touches that produce an experience. They love the novelty of print, and their ability to handle a tangible, quality piece stands out in the crush of electronic messaging. But not just any print will do. It has to be intriguing. This is where foil stamping comes in. Sure foil stamping costs more, but it can pay great dividends.

There are two types of foil stamping: hot stamping and cold foil transfer. Both create an elegant, standout look that says, “You matter enough to go the extra mile.”

Hot stamping is used to create the look of richness, quality, and elegance. In this process, the foil is applied to the substrate under the heat and pressure of a hot die. The process costs more than cold foil transfer but creates extremely precise images.

Cold foil transfer uses a photopolymer printing plate to transfer the substrate. The stock and the film are placed under light pressure between the plate and an aluminum roller and exposed to ultraviolet light to cure and bond the foil in the image area.  The process costs less than hot foil stamping, but the images are less precise.

Here are a few other important things to know about foil stamping:

• Comes in a wide range of colors, both metallic and nonmetallic.
• Comes in both gloss and matte versions.
• Available in special effects versions, including marble, wood grain, and leather, as well as in holographic versions.
• Most foil stamping is done over smooth stocks, but it can also be applied to textured stocks. When this happens, it will take on some of the texture of the stock beneath it. Foil stamping can also be combined with embossing to create a raised image.
• Because foil is opaque, it does not change color regardless of the substrate on which it is used. This makes it great for use on darker and colored papers.

Foil stamping can offer tremendous benefits for the right projects and really creates breakthrough effects for the right audiences. Talk to us about when and where foil stamping will work for you. 

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606
Or visit our website here for more information.

Share on LinkedIn

Best Practices in Personalized Marketing

If you want great marketing results, it’s important to personalize text, images, and other content based on what you know about the recipient. But just dropping in data-driven content doesn’t guarantee success. Sometimes other factors can dull your results. Maybe the offer is great, but the design is so uninteresting that nobody reads it. Or the headline is snappy and the design is great, but there is no incentive for people to respond.

Let’s look at three best practices that need to be the foundation of any personalized print campaign.

·         Traditional marketing rules apply. Even with personalized marketing, traditional rules hold firm. Ultimately, all of the elements — creative, message (including personalization), offer, segmentation, call to action, and incentive —need to come together to determine success. 

·         Focus on relevance, not “personalization.” It doesn’t matter how “personalized” a document is. If it isn’t relevant, it is worthless. Take the shoe market. You don’t want to sell orthopedic shoes to teenagers. You can deck out the mailer with text messaging terms, pictures of X-Games, and use all the contemporary lingo, but it’s not a relevant message unless a teen needs to purchase a birthday present for grandpa.

·         Know your customers, then market to what you know. When the National Hockey League began 1:1 communication with its customers, it asked them to fill out a survey that indicated that 40% of the of NHL’s fan base lives outside their favorite team’s home market. That means these fans can’t easily go to games or access highlights. Imagine the opportunity for the league! So ask yourself, what don’t you know about your customers now that might allow you to create relevance in a more powerful way later? Do a customer mail or email survey. Use what you find out to speak directly to the needs and interests of your customers.

Investing in your marketing database and developing an intimate understanding of your customers takes time, dedicated resources, and manpower, but it is one of the most important investments you can make. Personalization is a powerful tool, but to get the big pay-off, it cannot work alone.

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606

Or visit our website here for more information.

Share on LinkedIn

Did You Know Personalized Printing Is Green Printing?

When you think about personalization, do you think about lower cost per lead, higher per order values, and increased ROI? You should. But you should also get excited about how personalized printing helps you go green.

Here are three reasons why:

• Targeting means you send out fewer pieces of mail—saving trees, chemicals, and fossil fuels.
• A cleaner database means that your recipients deliver fewer pieces right to the trash can.
• Digital production has many green benefits, including no plates, no chemicals, and no spray powders.

Say you are a small college printing four-color catalogs to mail to prospective students. Each catalog is 252 pages, covering the full range of disciplines and activities. As a result, only 25% of the material is relevant to the prospective student. Now, instead of printing 252 pages, you print 64 pages of material relevant to each student. Not only does this increase the effectiveness of each booklet, but you’ve just reduced your consumption of paper, ink, and chemicals by 75%.

As another example, in a static mail campaign, you might send out 15,000 postcards to a generic list. With personalized mail, you are likely to select only a percentage of that list. This might be the top 10% of your customers, customers who are most likely to purchase certain products or customers who, based on defined triggers (such as an expiring auto lease), are most likely to be in the market for a new purchase. Now, instead of mailing 15,000 pieces, you might mail only 1,500. Not only are these offers more targeted and relevant, but you’ve just reduced your printing and mailing volume by 90%, a huge slash in your carbon footprint.

It pays to be green. Not only should you consider green alternatives because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s good business. Consumers want to do business with companies that are good stewards of the environment.

So double marketing dip—personalize it!

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606
Or visit our website here for more information.



Share On LinkedIn

How the Brain Responds to Print vs. Digital

One of the marketing surprises of the last few years has been how strongly Millennials—the smartphone and fully wired generation—respond to direct mail. In fact, according to “USPS Mail Moments 2016,” Millennials are more likely than other generations to read, organize, and sort their mail than all other generations. They are also less likely to discard their mail without reading it.

Why do even so-called digital natives still respond so strongly to print? Could it be, in part, how we are wired? The answer is yes. Neuromarketing research shows that our brains react differently to printed material than to digital media.

To more fully understand how the brain reacts to physical vs. digital mail, the United States Postal Service partnered with the Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University’s Fox School of Business to gauge responses to physical and digital advertising pieces. Researchers used brain images, biometrics (e.g. heart rate and respiration), eye tracking, and questionnaires to measure reactions.

They found that:

• Participants processed digital ad content more quickly.
• They spent more time with physical ads.
• Physical ads triggered activity in a part of the brain that corresponds with value and desirability.
• Participants had a stronger emotional response to physical ads and remembered them better.

Canada Post found similarly intriguing results in its neuromarketing research project. They measured the response to campaigns that used the same creative and messaging for both physical and digital media.

They found that:

• Direct mail campaigns required 21% less cognitive effort to process.
• Participants’ recall was 70% higher if they were exposed to direct mail rather than a digital ad.
• Activation in parts of the brain that correspond to motivation response was 20% higher for direct mail.

As human beings, we are wired to respond more strongly to physical, printed messages. For marketers who want advertising with long-lasting impact and easy recollection, printed materials can clearly make a difference.

Excerpted and edited from the USPSDelivers.com presentation “Still Relevant: A Look at How Millennials Respond to Direct Mail” (2017).

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606
Or visit our website here for more information.


Share On LinkedIn

Why You Need a MultiChannel Strategy

We live in an era of gadgets. Research shows that 94% of people have their cellphone within arm’s reach at all times, consumers are shopping on tablets while watching television, and more email is opened on mobile devices than a desktop.  Customers continue to move into a multichannel world, and responsive marketers need to go there, too.

Channel integration isn’t something marketers can afford to ignore. According to Target Marketing’s Media Usage Survey, 37% of marketers’ 2016 budgets went to online marketing, 29% went to print (direct mail, magazines, newspapers), and 21% went to live events. The rest was split between radio, television, and space advertising.

Even as direct mail remains the bedrock of highly effective marketing campaigns, digital components are increasingly part of the mix. According to Target Marketing, the following digital channels are growing the most rapidly:

•          Online advertising (54%)

•          Email   (49%)

•          Mobile marketing (38%)

•          Search engine marketing (41%)

•          Search engine optimization (43%)

•          Social media engagement (55%)

•          Social media advertising (49%)

Consumers’ lives are multichannel, so marketing is increasingly multichannel, too.

The multichannel approach also produces better results. In a data analysis of retailers, McKinsey found that the more channels customer use to engage with the store, the more they spend on an annual basis. Customers who shopped both in store and who used catalogs spent three times more than those who did not. When Internet marketing is added to the mix, revenue grows by four times. Likewise, customers who shopped online spent four times as much when catalogs were added to the mix and six times more when they also shopped in store. 

Why does multichannel work so well? One reason is that it provides repeated exposure and reinforcement of the message. Another is that different media play different roles in moving customers along the sales funnel.

What does your channel mix look like? Why not talk to us about adding, not just more channels to your mix, but creating the optimum mix of channels to keep your message in front of customers, move them through the sale funnel, and get them all the way to a sale. 

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606
Or visit our website here for more information.


Share On LinkedIn