Thursday, December 28, 2017

Get More for Your Money

Consumers love to hear how they can get the most out of their money. It is a great marketing tactic, and it is no different when it comes to your marketing budget. Here are a few ways get the most bang for your buck.

1. Use our "house" paper. Paper prices fluctuate often, so if you have not standardized on a specific paper, ask about less expensive options. If your piece does not demand a specialty paper, opt to use our house paper. We purchase this paper in high volume, so it is almost always the least expensive option.

2. Print four-color in gang runs. The most expensive way to print four-color is for us to run the job by itself on the press. However, with a “gang run,” we run multiple jobs at the same time, then trim them down to size. This can be a great way to get excellent results for less money.

3. Avoid bleeds. If color needs to go to the edge of the page, you can often get a similar effect less expensively by printing on colored paper. Without bleeds, your project might also require less paper or be able to be run on a smaller press.

4. Clean and de-dupe. It is not the most exciting job, but cleaning and de-duping your mailing list can drop your costs dramatically. With a clean list, you are only printing pieces that end up at their intended destinations. Thus, you are not sending multiple pieces to the same home or business.

5. Try new formats. Just because you have always done a brochure for a particular promotion does not mean it is the only option. Experiment with a postcard or other format and see whether you get a better response rate. A little creativity can go a long way toward saving money.

Need more ideas? Let us brainstorm ways to help you get great results and the most from your budget. 

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

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Are You Short-Sighted? Or Long-Sighted?

When you are calculating the ROI of your print, email, or multichannel marketing campaign, how long a view do you take? Do you stop tracking revenue after a month? One year? What about the lifetime of the customer?
Lifetime customer value (LCV) is an overlooked metric that should be part of how marketers measure success. Customers gained through personalized printing campaigns, in particular, tend not just to purchase more, but to be more loyal than customers acquired through traditional methods. Thus, real ROI should include recurring revenue as well as the immediate revenue generated.
How do you determine LCV? There are a variety of factors to consider:
•    Churn rate: How often do customers leave your customer base?
•    Retention cost: How much does it cost you to support, bill, and incentivize your customers?
•    Periodic revenue: Do you have recurring revenue streams? How much do customers spend during an average period?
You do not have to calculate out LCV indefinitely. Many companies estimate their LCV out for three to seven years.
Even if it is an estimate, LCV gives you a much better idea of what value your marketing campaigns are creating. For example, one small lawn care company sent out 300 personalized mailers, and based on the initial campaign revenue, found that the mailing barely broke even. However, the company’s customers tended to be loyal over time. For every new customer it gained, the company knew that it would have several years of recurring revenue. As a result, the owner estimated the campaign ROI at 8000% on an LCV basis. That is an entirely different equation!
How do you view your customers, on a one-off basis or over the long term?  

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

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Personalization Works—But You Have to Get It Right

Studies consistently show that personalization works, but you have to get it right. Get it wrong, and customers will move on.
This comes from Accenture’s “13th Annual Strategy Global Consumer Pulse Research,” which surveyed more than 25,000 consumers around the world. Accenture found that 41% of U.S. shoppers said they have disengaged with a company because of “poor personalization and lack of trust.”
The cost to U.S. retailers is staggering: $756 billion in lost retail and brand sales.
Fortunately for print marketers, “poor personalization” tends to be associated with digital marketing rather than direct mail. Digital marketing can seem like a stalker — following you around the web and popping up at every turn. But direct mail is more transparent, and consumers’ reaction to it is overwhelmingly positive. In fact, InfoTrends found that 84% of consumers said they are “much more likely” or “somewhat more likely” to open direct mail when the content is personalized.
How do you get personalization right? Whether you are sending direct mail or email, the answer is simple: transparency. Let customers know that you are collecting data on them. Ask for their preferences so they can give information voluntarily. Position targeted and personalized communication as a benefit to your customers and one that they can participate in to make the experience better.
Need help developing your marketing database for more effective targeting? Let us help.

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

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Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Want to Boost Results? Think in Color!

Did you know that from the moment you walk into a retail store, your experience is highly calibrated? Retailers know that the amount you purchase is influenced by the style and speed of music it is playing, the luxury of the scents it is wafting, and even the level of the floor beneath your feet. (If you step down into the display area, retailers know that you are more likely to buy than if the floor is level.)
While you cannot influence the music, the olfactory environment, or the location in which your audience reads your mail, you can affect their mood and inclination to buy based on the colors you use in your layout and design. If you are already segmenting and personalizing your mailers to improve relevance, choosing the right colors can add some extra muscle to your marketing. 
Different colors affect the reader’s mood in various ways. Yellow is bright and cheery; it connotes youth and optimism. Red implies energy, action, and sense of urgency; but it can also suggest rebellion. Blue conveys trust and security. Black connotes power.
Understanding this, you can match the colors you use to the message you want to convey. As consumers, yellow makes us happy. Try using it for starbursts, backgrounds, and borders. Red creates urgency and encourages readers to take action. Use it to announce deadlines, clearance sales, and short-term offers. Blue is associated with trust, so it is often used for banks and finance. Did you know that purple is associated with relaxation? That is why it is used for marketing products related to aging and retirement.
Research has also shown that color influences different types of shoppers differently. KISSMetrics, which offers software for online analytics, has found the following correlations:
    • Red, black, and royal blue are associated with impulse shopping. These colors are often used by fast food restaurants, outlet malls, and for clearance sales.
    • Navy blue and teal appeal to shoppers on a budget. They are frequently used by banks and large department stores to promote value but not discounts.
    • Pink, sky blue, and rose are associated with more traditional shopping patterns. They are often used by clothing stores.


So take your personalization to the next step. Integrate color into your targeting and messaging as much as you incorporate demographics and other personalization fields. Start with conventional wisdom about what works and what doesn’t. Conduct A/B testing to refine your understanding into pinpoint accuracy. Then sit back and reap the results!

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

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Simple Strategy for Designers to Stay on Task

Even the greatest technology is only as productive as the user. If you want to get more done, it takes more than great design software. It takes great time management.
Take it from designer Jake Knapp, who wrote the book Sprint. In the book, Knapp codifies the concept of a “design sprint,” his five-day process for coming up with ideas, prototypes, and testing to help designers get the most out of their ever-compressed work schedules.
For everyday projects, however, Knapp has a more simplified way to stay on task. As a visual guy, he suggests creating a graphic to visually represent daily priorities.  
Here’s how it works:
1. Fold a piece of paper in half to create two columns. 
2. On the left side, write a list of the most pressing (mission-critical and time-sensitive) projects.
3. On the right side, write a list of the tasks that are important but without the same level of urgency.
4. At the bottom of the right-hand side, write down the rest of the “to do” items (i.e., wish list) that you can fit in as you go along.
Pin the paper where you can see it. Look at it regularly throughout the day. Scratch out completed items and recreate your lists as tasks are completed.

As you work through your lists, consider tacking each new list over top of the old one instead of throwing the old one away. This way, when you feel that you are falling further and further behind, you can look back through your old lists and see just how productive you’ve really been!

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

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Are You Selling for the Short- or Long-Term?

When you create personalized print communications for your customers, are you thinking about short-term selling or long-term relationships? While getting the quick sale feels great, the biggest profits come from long-term customers who provide recurring revenue over time. Here are five reasons to focus on recurring personalized print programs rather than “quick hit” campaigns:
1. Building relationships. 
Personalization, by definition, is personal and implies a relationship. To establish a relationship with your customers, you need to get to know them. No one-off campaign, no matter how successful, can do that.
2. Learning more over time.
At the beginning of a campaign, you are making educated guesses about how your customers think and act. As they respond, you learn more about them. This allows you to modify your messaging, offers and calls to action to have the most impact over time.
3. Making more money.
As you learn which campaign elements are most effective at motivating your customers, your campaigns will be more profitable. More refined campaigns translate into higher response rates, higher conversion rates, and increased ROI.
4. Maximizing investment.
Setting up your first 1:1 print campaign requires an investment in time and money. By developing programs rather than one-off campaigns, your set-up costs are amortized over the life of the program. As costs become amortized, your ROI per campaign goes up.
5. Not continually having re-prove program value.
Unless you are the president or owner of the company, chances are you had to work with a team of others to make the initial decision to deploy personalized print communications. Each time you run another campaign, you need to go through the entire process again. With programs, you have the freedom to refine and maximize your efforts without having to re-prove their value before each deployment.


So think long-term. Programs allow you to develop and refine your marketing strategy over time and take advantage of the value of relationship-building. One-off campaigns can produce great short-term results, but the deepest profits come from investing in your customers for the long term. 

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

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Thursday, October 19, 2017

Make Your Print Faster to Read

Who has time to read marketing communications these days? Consumers love print, but they have less and less time to read. You have to hook them fast—and keep them engaged. The solution? Make your printed pieces faster and easier to read.  Here are five ways to freshen things up and make your printed pieces “sticky."
1. Make your pieces scannable.
Most people scan their printed materials. They don’t read them. So make your projects scannable. If your messaging tends to be text heavy, try saying the same thing in fewer words. In fact, why not try cutting the number of words in half?
2. Use more white space.
Use more white space and give your design breathing room. Choose typography that is easy to read. Tight kerning and condensed fonts let you pack in more information, but they can also result in communications that feel cramped.
3. Replace text with images and graphics.
People absorb visual information more quickly than text, so ditch the text and tap into the power of graphics and icons, images, and data points.
4. Go big!
Have you noticed that most postcards these days are oversized? It’s not unusual to see letter-sized pieces printed on card stock that is 6” x 9” or 11.375” x 6”. While you can still be successful with traditional-sized mailers, over-sized projects stand out. They won’t disappear as easily between the utility bill and the catalogs. But oversized or not, the “less is more” rule still applies.
5. Target your messaging.
Segment your mailings by key demographics and customize the content to speak to the interests of the people receiving them. This means more than just swapping out demographically appropriate imagery. It includes changing up the tone and the messaging to reflect the unique “personality” of each target audience.

Want to hook and engage today’s consumers? Get creative. Give them pieces they can read quickly and can’t resist. 

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


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The Empowerment of Personalization

Every now and then, data points jump out at you. Here are two data points about personalization that jumped out at us recently:
  • 35% of Amazon's revenue is generated by its recommendation engine.
  • 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a retailer that recognizes them by name, recommends options based on past purchases, or knows their purchase history. (Accenture)
We live in a world in which we have access to more information than ever. This can be both empowering and paralyzing. When consumers have too many choices, they can get overwhelmed and end up not choosing anything at all.
That’s why personalization is so important. Done right, it helps consumers navigate and simplify the maze of choices and take the stress out of making a decision. With personalization, brands are essentially saying, “We know you. We know what you like. Let’s make this easy.”
Personalized recommendations are just one way data-driven communications can be highly effective, however. Other types of personalization, such as triggered direct mail, demographically targeted email, and personalized cross-sells and upsells are highly effective, as well.
Are you tapping the power of personalization? Do you know what your customers like, when they buy, and what motivates them to buy? If not, you’re missing critical opportunities to connect with them and guide them into smart purchases—yours!

Need help? 

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


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5 Reasons Print Stubbornly Refuses to Be Replaced

No matter how frequently marketing gurus prophesy the demise of print, and no matter how loudly and publicly they do it, print marketing remains the bedrock of any successful multichannel marketing program. Let’s look at five reasons why print is here to stay. 
1. It’s just prettier. It doesn't matter how gorgeous your JPGs are; a beautifully printed piece will blow away your screen graphics every time.
2. You can’t avoid it. When you communicate by email, recipients can't see beyond the subject line until they open the message. With clear envelopes, windows, and exterior envelope printing, you start communicating your print message as soon as the piece arrives in the mailbox.  
3. Print is one of many touchpoints. Today's complex marketing environment requires multiple touch points. According to the Online Marketing Institute, it takes six to eight marketing touches to generate a viable sales lead. Repetition is critical, and print is a critical channel in the mix.
4. Print influences buying decisions. Marketers once thought that with the growth of e-commerce, printed catalogs would fade away. History indicates otherwise. Surveys find that consumers who receive printed catalogs are more likely (in one study, twice as likely) to make online purchases at the retailer’s website as those who do not.
5. Consumers trust print more. 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. Print carries greater weight and authenticity than digital marketing. People continue to trust messages communicated in print.

Print remains irreplaceable in today’s “what’s in it for me?” world. While e-marketing is a necessary component in any multichannel marketing campaign, print carries benefits that online channels just can’t touch.

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

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Wednesday, September 20, 2017

When Is Personal Too Personal?

One of the benefits of 1:1 marketing is the ability to increase the relevance of each communication by making the message more personal. By using the information you already know about the recipient, you can communicate on a more intimate, 1:1 level.
But this approach can also be misused. Individuals and businesses are very protective of their privacy these days, and rightly so. Customers want to know that their data is not only safe but that the marketers they do business with won't misuse it.
What are some first steps you can take to ensure that your customers and prospects know that you care about their privacy?
  • Include an official privacy statement in your information-gathering materials.
  • If you are collecting data, include a notice of physical and data security procedures and a promise of confidentiality.
  • When personalizing your marketing messages, don’t disclose overly personal details (“Hey, Bob! Ready to default on that sky-high mortgage?”).
  • Be transparent. Provide full details about what respondents have to do to receive any prizes or promotional items.
  • Follow all opt-in regulations, including double opt-ins for email lists and providing the option to opt-out of future marketing contacts.
  • Assure that respondents’ information will not be sold to third parties.

Privacy standards, both in print and online, are always evolving. So stay abreast of the discussion. Talk to your customers to find out any other concerns and address them. The more you can assure your customers that their personal information is safe with you and that it will be used appropriately, the more you will win their trust.

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606

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Old Vs. New Media: Which Is Better?

When it comes to the effectiveness of local advertising, which is better, traditional media or new media? The answer might surprise you.
When local advertisers asked about which channels are most effective for building their businesses, Borrell Associates found that companies rated both equally. On a scale of 1 to 5, traditional media ranked 2.83, while digital media ranked 2.86.
“The push and pull between ‘old’ media and ‘new’ has occluded the fact that both are effective means of advertising products and services,” notes Borrell in its Chart of the Week [1]. “There are differences within each, however: the kings of traditional media, according to advertisers, are television and direct mail; the kings of digital are social, search, and email.”
So if you think that traditional channels are waning in favor of digital ones, think again. Traditional channels, including direct mail, remain strong for a simple reason. They work.
Source: Borrell’s Annual Survey of Local Advertisers, April-August 2017; n = 3,508 responses.

[1] https://www.borrellassociates.com/surveys

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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

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Thursday, August 24, 2017

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/



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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.

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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.

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Friday, July 21, 2017

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
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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).

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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
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