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!

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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
Or visit our website here for more information.


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