Securing Your Customers’ Loyalty

Your customers are a hot commodity. Everybody wants them. So how do you keep them loyal to you? Make your relationship so great that they don’t want to go anywhere else.

1. Market in the age of “me.”  

Know your customers well enough to give them a personalized experience. This goes beyond targeting with basic demographics like gender, age, and household income. Look at the channels your customers respond to, when they make purchases, and what they buy. Acting on this data helps your customers see that you know and care about them. It helps with cross-sells and upsells, too!

2. Coupons galore!

Consumers have a love affair with coupons, including mobile. According to Juniper Research, mobile coupons are 10x more likely to be used than printed coupons.

3. Don’t be channel agnostic.

Know which channels your customers are most likely to respond to, then use them. If a customer requires two emails to respond but responds the first time to direct mail, get them on the “mail first” list. If someone else is more likely to respond to an email than a printed newsletter, get them on the “email first” list. Keep your branding, message, and imaging consistent regardless of channel.

4. Ask their opinion.

Use response cards, personalized URLs, and other survey mechanisms to get your customers’ opinion on products, services, and potential business changes. When one specialty retailer wanted to give its location a facelift, it used a targeted direct mail piece with personalized URLs to ask its customers about products and services they wanted but the company didn’t offer. It got an earful! The retailer incorporated the most popular suggestions, and its sales soared.

5. Remember to say “thank you.”

Everyone likes to be appreciated. Send a personalized “thank you” letter, postcard, or other mailer once in a while. Attach a no-strings coupon or discount just to engender their goodwill . . . and you will.

Gaining customer loyalty doesn’t have to be rocket science. You just have to put in the effort.  

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

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Don't Let Print Buying Stress You Out

Does print buying stress you out? There are so many details that can make or break a print job. Then you have finishing, mailing lists, dealing with the USPS. . . . and oh, yes, schedules. Print buying can be a daunting task. Try these common sense strategies to make your experience more predictable and (hopefully) stress-free.

1. Get into our ears. By involving us early in your project, you will get a high quality result while saving time and money. Tell us your concept, then we will suggest colors, papers, layouts, and finishes that can minimize production time at the best cost.

Plan backwards. Given today’s advances in printing technology, buyers often underestimate the time required to deliver a job. Sure, we may be printing on a digital press, but you still have prepress, proofing, special order requirements, and finishing. Providing ample lead time will save money by preventing rush charges.

Know your specs. The more explicit your instructions, the more likely you are to be happy with the quality and cost of the end product. One missing piece of information or last-minute change can delay a cost estimate, proof, or final production.

Proof everything. We will alert you if we identify errors in your file, but we aren’t experts in your marketing copy—you are. Your print job cannot move into the next stage of production until you sign off on the proof, and that includes your copy.

Even if you do not have a job to submit today, give us a call so we can start preplanning your next project. Together, we can create a stress-free print buying experience that will exceed your expectations for quality, efficiency, and cost.

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

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5 Stats that Show Print Still Matters (A Lot)

Think print is starting to “lose its cool” in the age of digital marketing? Actually, the opposite is true. With the growth of digital, print has solidified its place as a channel that marketers cannot ignore. Here are five print marketing statistics that every marketer should know.

1. Some customers can only be reached by print. Even in today's digital age, there are still large groups of consumers who cannot be reached through digital channels. According to the Pew Research Center, 11% of Americans have no Internet access at all, and among certain populations, such as older Americans, rural Americans, and those without high school diplomas, this number is significantly higher. (Source: Pew Research Center, 2018)

2. Many consumers use print and digital coupons equally. Who doesn't like a deal? While some consumers prefer digital coupons for their convenience and immediacy, 41% of shoppers use print and digital coupons equally. (Valassis, 2017).

3. Direct mail is the number one driver for online fundraising.  According to MobileCause, donors are three times more likely to give online in response to a direct mail appeal than an e-appeal. (MobileCause 2018)

4. Consumers spend more time with direct mail. According to a widely cited study on the neuroscience of print, people spend 118% more time considering direct mail than they do digital mail. (CanadaPost, 2016)

5. Millennials love direct mail. Nearly half (47%) of Millennials look forward to checking their mail every day. In a digital world, even the most digitally embedded crave human connection.  (United States Postal Service, 2016)

There is a reason that print remains the bedrock of today’s most successful marketing campaigns. Email, mobile, and social media all have important places in the mix, but print remains the cornerstone of truly successful multichannel marketing for a reason.

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

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Got Relationship? It’s the Key to Nonprofit Fundraising

Pop quiz: What is the factor most likely to impact a person’s willingness to donate to a nonprofit organization? According to a survey by YouGov, it’s relationship. Key to this relationship is helping donors feel great about their donations and see how their giving is making a difference.

How do you deepen your donors’ relationships with you? Get to know them. Use surveys, third-party data sources, pop-up web forms, and other methods to gather information about your donors that you may not already have. This information can be used to tailor your communications in ways that are most effective. 

Say you are providing services to underprivileged children around the world. If your survey reveals that potential donors are in the medical field, for example, you might emphasize the value of their donations to fight disease or provide clean water. If, on the other hand, donors are teachers, you might highlight the ability to give the children good educations. Or you could provide the same messaging to both groups, but use different imagery.

Not everyone wants to take the time out of their day to fill out a survey, so if you are going to ask people to do so, give them something of value in return. “Value” doesn’t have to mean a monetary incentive, such as a gift card or entrance into a drawing. It can be something as simple as exclusive insight into a project you are funding ("Respond to our survey and receive a link to an exclusive behind-the-scenes video of our volunteers at work").

Donors give because it makes them feel good. The response incentive needs to reflect that motivation, and it will be different for every organization.

Need help creating a donor survey to further the mission of your organization? 
Give us a call at 440-946-0606.
Or visit our website here for more information.

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Proof That Personalized Content Marketing Works

While push marketing remains an important component of any customer acquisition or retention program, pull marketing has become even more so.  Often times, consumers have already done much, if not the majority, of their research before reaching out to a salesperson. This is why content marketing has become such a critical part of any marketing program.

One of the most common forms of content marketing is the customer newsletter. It educates, creates thought leadership, and presents the company as a valued resource. Adding personalization makes this content even more compelling. One community-based healthcare system found out just how much.

After sending a traditional newsletter for years, the organization began matching the content to what it knew of patients’ health conditions. After about a year, it conducted a readership survey to find out how the new approach was being received.

The results?

• 93% of respondents felt the articles were relevant and of interest.

• 73% read the entire newsletter every time it came in the mail.

• 77% said it was easier and quicker to read.

• 95% said they became aware of services that were previously unknown.

Not only did the healthcare system solidify its relationship with existing patients, but nearly every one of these patients learned about some of the provider’s services they didn’t know about before. That’s great cross-marketing!

Because the organization tracked which articles patients received as well as patients’ usage of services, it was also able to calculate ROI on its efforts. ROI on individual articles ranged from $50 to $444 per dollar spent.

Would you like to add personalized content into your company newsletters? Talk to us about how!

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

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Are Your Fonts Like a 1970s Suit?

On one hand, using multiple fonts in a print layout can open you to a world of creativity. On the other hand, if you use too many fonts (or if the fonts you choose don’t work well together), you don’t end up with creativity. You end up with a mess.

Type often obeys the law of engineering “form follows function.” That is, a typeface should be appropriate to what the typesetter designed it to do. At the same time, that form needs to be aesthetically pleasing. The basis of good typographic design is balancing the two.

For example . . .

Bell Gothic was designed in 1938 to improve the legibility of phone directories, as well as provide economy of space.

Frutiger was designed to make airport signage easy to read from a distance.

Courier inspires a sense of nostalgia.

When choosing a font, choose a font appropriate to the task at hand. Think of fonts like clothing. What we wear should be appropriate to the weather as well as to the context (formal versus casual), but also be attractive. Likewise, some fonts look dated and scream “1970s,” the typographic equivalent of a plaid leisure suit.

Like everything else, typefaces go in and out of fashion. While it’s tempting to think that no one really pays close attention to fonts, there is often a subconscious visceral reaction to bad type, not unlike the subconscious reactions that we have to poor color combinations or out-of-date clothing.

Understanding how font choices affect the perception and reception of documents is one of the crucial elements to good design. You should not treat it lightly. If you need help, just ask. You can use one of our in-house designers or we can recommend a good designer to assist you. 

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

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Visual Differences Between Digital and Offset

Gone are the days of debating the benefits of digital vs. offset printing. With the quality being nearly indistinguishable between the two, most marketers hardly think about it anymore. However, there are still production differences between digital and offset printing, and it’s always good to know what they are.

Most digital presses use dry toner. Consequently, one of the visual differences between digital and offset is how the toner impacts the brightness of the print.

Toner tends to sit on top of the sheet rather than soaking into it like offset ink. This results in a vivid image that can be slightly shinier than offset. Some digital presses use toner suspended in liquid (sometimes called “ink” and other times “liquid toner”) that creates a slightly softer image.

If you will be coating your pieces, the visual difference between offset and digital disappears. This is because the coating masks any difference in gloss between the two. While many marketers prefer the bright, glossier image of toner-based digital, if you are among those who prefer the softer look (and are not using liquid toner printing), you may want to consider a matte coating.

Another difference between offset and digital is how the presses handle large areas of solid color. Although digital presses can print 100% solids, if your design will be using large areas of solid color, it is recommended that you build your solids using color blends. If you are printing black, for example, instead of using 100B, you might use 40C, 40M, 40Y, and 100B.

There are other subtle differences between digital and offset, but in the end, what’s most important is whether the printed piece achieves your marketing goals. We’re here to make sure that, regardless of which process you use, the answer is unequivocally yes!

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

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