Thursday, May 18, 2017

Want More Reasons to Add Color? Here It Is!

When we think about adding color to marketing pieces, we often think about photos, charts, and graphs. But color can be added in many other ways, as well. These include highlight text, brightly colored banners, borders, and backgrounds, and symbols such as starbursts and arrows. 
Why think about more places to add color? According to Shoshana Burger, director of corporate strategy and customer insights for X-Rite Pantone, there are some powerful reasons:
  • People are 78% more likely to remember words and phrases in color.
  • Time spent reading a document is 80% higher in color.
  • Basic understanding of content is 80% higher in color.
  • Color increases brand recognition by 87%.
  • 65% of purchasing decisions involve color.
  • Color printing is 55% more likely to be read than black-and-white.
  • Response time is 30% faster in color.
  • When used in promotions, color increases the likelihood of purchase by 80%.
“Eighty percent of our human experience is filtered through visual cues,” noted Burger, speaking in a presentation titled “The Power of Color in Communications,” hosted by Printing Impressions magazine.  “Color also creates an emotional connection. Choosing the right color, and how that color conveys to the right user, is important.”
So look for ways to increase the use of color in your next mailing. Add a colored background to a text box. Use highlight color in your text to draw attention to offers or critical product details. Add an extra image, chart, or graph, or enlarge a colorful image that you already have.

Whatever you do, get more color in there!


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How Do You Know Your Efforts Are Working?

Creating a personalized print or multichannel marketing campaign takes significant investment in time, energy, and resources. You want to get maximum return on your investment. How do you know what is working and what isn’t? You have to measure the results.  
Measuring results goes beyond determining ROI. Sure, it’s important to know what kind of return you are getting, but it’s just as important to ask why you got the results you did. What factors influenced the conversion rate and value per sale? Why was this campaign more or less effective than the one before?
Say you give respondents a chance to win a sweepstakes for $500 if they log into a website and fill out a survey. The campaign generates a 5% response rate with 28% of those responses converting to sales of $200 each. It’s important to calculate the ROI on this campaign, but it’s equally important to test which parts of the campaign were responsible for the results and what happens if you change them.
For example, what if you increase the incentive to $2,500? Does the response rate go up? If so, does the dollar per sale increase, as well? Or does it not have a significant effect on the response rate or value per sale at all?
Don’t stop at one or even two tests. Analyze over time.
  • If you increase the incentive even more, does the response rate continue to go up? Or does it flatten out?
  • Does the effectiveness change based on the audience you are targeting?
  • Does a sweepstakes to win a free mountain bike motivate one audience, while a Nintendo Wii motivates another?
Mix it up, and test, test, test. This is critical intelligence that will help you refine your programs over time and get the maximum results out of your marketing dollars.

Need help? Just ask!


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


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Guide to Being Authentic

Whether you are writing copy for direct mail, email, social media, or mobile video, it is important to be authentic. People buy from people, so create marketing copy that is believable and that makes people want to buy from you. But like everything else, being authentic still takes planning. Here are five tips for keeping it real.
1. Be human.  Don’t sound like a corporate brochure. Instead of saying, “We’re going to leverage our core competency to shift the paradigm,” say, “As experts in this area, we’re going to do something new and exciting.” Use common language. Speak in a way that your audience can relate to.
2. Be passionate.  Passion is contagious. When someone argues deeply and passionately about an environmental cause, a weekend hobby, or an outstanding vacation destination, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. Even if your product is as dry as Melba toast, find something to get excited about, then write from that source of passion.
3. Be vulnerable. Studies consistently show that consumers are more likely to trust a company that admits its flaws and failings but is honest about them and works hard to correct them than one who claims that all paths lead to success. Vulnerability is real, and we relate to it. Vulnerability builds trust.
4. Be honest. Don’t exaggerate the truth, and don’t make promises you can’t keep. If consumers sense that you’re not being honest about one or more elements of your marketing pitch, they will question the truthfulness of all of it.

5. Have fun. Have some fun in your marketing. Use humor, lighthearted pictures, and an element of surprise now and then. We have enough things in our lives that are dull and boring. Don’t make your product one of them.

Please give us a call at 440-946-0606
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