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Get Marketing Results With The Benefits of Variable Data Printing

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Traditional direct mail marketing services produce one piece of copy that targets a specific audience. Although there have been many success stories with direct mail marketing, there is another method that you should consider because of the many benefits of variable data printing.

What are the Benefits of Variable Data Printing?

Variable data printing allows you to change elements based off of individual customer data such as text, images, and graphics, from one piece to the next without slowing down the printing process. This allows you to personalize your marketing materials down to a specific individual without sacrificing your time constraints. This gives your direct mail marketing campaign renewed potential at getting positive results.

Adopting VDP to Increase Your Chances of Success

By combining accurate data of an individual with your desired marketing goals, you can create copy that will be compelling and relevant. Many think that print is dead and that most people throw away marketing materials they receive in the mail. However, according to Compu-Mail, almost two times as many US adults react positively to receiving mail than negatively. Furthermore, they have found that direct mail outperforms all digital channels by nearly 700% in terms of response rates. This is related to the fact that 70% of Americans say mail is more personal than the internet. With the year winding down, statistics regarding businesses planned budget for the following year have been released. According to Target Marketing, 11% of businesses plan to increase their spending on VDP while another 16% plan to keep it the same.

Acquiring and Applying Data

The key to a successful VDP campaigns resides with the accuracy and amount of data you have collected. You want to always make sure this data is accurate to ensure a positive response from customers. Furthermore, having as much data as possible on an individual will allow you to maximize your personalization.

At One Stop Mail, we have experience producing successful direct mail marketing campaigns utilizing the tenets of variable data printing to achieve our client’s desired results.

How Can We Help?

When you have questions or want to crush your sales goals with a direct marketing campaign, reach out to us today at contact us today or 602.223.3003. We have years of experience creating effective direct mail campaigns, from conceptualization to deployment.  

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Stellar Design Trumps Immaculate Wordsmithing

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The most important aspect of a direct mail campaign is the imagery you choose to incorporate into the design. People in this day and age have become expert skimmers. This is why it is important to grab their attention with an image so that your words do not become an afterthought—it urges them to dig deeper rather than toss it aside.

Images Are Not Complimentary

An image should not be thought of as something that complements your message. It needs to hold its own weight and represent your message wholeheartedly. A great image is going to have the power to make people stop, and look further into what they are currently holding in their hands. This is mainly due to the fact that people can process images 60,000 times faster than they can words.

Moreover, the imagery will enable you to stand out from the competition. This greatly increases the chances that someone will engage with your marketing copy instead of passing over it. According to Compu-Mail post on print ad statistics, 73 percent of consumers prefer mail to other ad types. And according to the Direct Marketing Association 2014 Statistical Fact Book quoted by Beasley Direct, across all ages, the fraction of households who immediately discard print ads is lower now than in the 1980s, averaging about 6 percent. These are the statistics that are driving companies to use direct mail marketing campaigns. This is an opportunity for your business to break down everyone’s expectations and stand out amongst the competition. With a great image, you can deliver your unique message more effectively and overcome the consumer’s predisposition to marketing messages.  

Don’t Do it Alone

Hiring a professional graphic designer will help you avoid  the mistakes of going over budget, wasting invaluable time, and producing an unprofessional looking design. They have done this before and can help break down the process so you can better understand the overall direction and design decisions. Let’s face it, your business deserves the best, so don’t waste your time on amateur work.

The next thought that might be entering your head is where do I look for a great graphic designer and what criteria is pertinent in determining their ability to deliver? With One Stop Mail, you can lay those thoughts to rest. Our professionals will be able to help you craft a design that will make you confident in reaching your desired campaign goals.

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Maximizing Your Small Business With Direct Mail Services

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If you are a small business owner, you know that it is do-or-die to reach your customers with resonating dialogue. The main reason why small businesses fail to accomplish this is due to a poor marketing strategy. Even though we live in a highly digital age, direct mail allows businesses to bypass spam folders and get a piece of copy in the consumer’s hands.

The Effectiveness of Direct Mail

According to a Compu-Mail article called “25 Direct Marketing Statistics Prove Direct Mail Works,” 56% of customers find print marketing to be the most trustworthy type of marketing. This is due to the fact that direct mail offers small businesses the ability to get more personal with their message. This makes the customer feel less like a name on a list and more like a valued individual whose needs want to be met by your brand. Moreover, many recognize that it takes more effort to personalize a physical piece of copy rather than an email. With 70% of Americans saying mail is more personal than the internet, it may be time to consider using direct mail to reach your customers in a more meaningful way.

What Kinds of Copy Should You Send?

There are many things you can send to customers to ensure that your business stays top of mind. You can send postcards, coupons, brochures, catalogs, and other sorts of promotional materials. When trying to draft a design of your copy, you should be mindful of three things: eye-catching visuals, a strong message, and a clear action. All of these aspects need to then be tied together in a way that is personal for the customer. Without that key aspect, your copy will not have the glue to stay together when it gets into someone hands, and will most likely fall on deaf ears.

Who Should You Target?

The old method of mailing to as many people as you possibly can in the hope someone finds interest in your brand is just not feasible. This is especially wasteful for marketing budgets. The best way is to build customer profiles by figuring out who would be your ideal customer. From there you need to learn as much as you can about this customer like their age, demographic, and shopping habits. Of course, this will require more work if you are trying to target a whole new group of people that have not heard of your brand. You should also be targeting your current customers, for it is much easier to maintain current customers that have than it is to get new ones.

Start Your First Direct Mail Campaign

Direct mail is still an effective method for reaching your customer base. With highly personalized messaging complimented by stunning visuals, you can improve customer engagement and response with your marketing campaign. Take advantage of the direct mail’s versatility by sending different kinds of copy. Start physically connecting with your ideal customer with One Stop Mail, and begin breaking down the digital barrier that separates your brand from reaching eager ears.

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Direct Mail for Non Profits – Two Easy Ways to Save Money

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Although smaller nonprofit organizations have to initiate campaigns with smaller budgets, there are strategies that can be used to ensure savings on direct mail for non profits. We will discuss two strategies to help make a smaller budget achieve more. These strategies help save money and get you more bang for your buck, including unbranding and print planning.

Stripping Away the Branding Fluff

Sprinkling company plugs throughout your marketing materials has become second nature. However, this can be detrimental to the campaign’s success because people are hyper-aware when they encounter a marketing message. In “Pull the Plug The Value of Unbranded Content,” they say that if the target consumer does read on, they do so with a filter. They know that whatever they read next is subjective and is meant to be persuasive. This can affect your results, and lead to a campaign with undesirable data, diminishing your ROI.

To keep this from happening with your target audience, you can strip away all marketing identification. According to Joe Boland’s article “20 Big Ideas for Small Nonprofits,” the Southern Environmental Law Center tried sending their materials in a blank envelope with just the recipient’s information. This proved to be an effective strategy and allowed them to keep their costs down.  

Print Everything All At Once  

Many companies overlook the benefits of printing as many things as they can at the same time.  If you are printing multiple versions of a four-color brochure, you can save costs by using the same press sheet. Just make sure to be as detailed as possible when you send out your project for a quote. This will allow your printer to plan accordingly, which will help cut down on the number of plate changes and make-readies.

Now, to put your potential savings into perspective, let’s take a look at some numbers. In Joe Boland’s article, he  cited a real life example that details how much money a client ended up saving. The client had two acquisition mailings of 25,000 pieces. If they had printed them separately, they would have cost $7,198 each in comparison to $6,146 if they were printed together. That was an 8.7 percent decrease in cost per donor, from $81 to $74.

Repeat Direct Mail for Non Profits’ Success Stories

Keep in mind that these two ideas are meant to reduce your direct mail costs. However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore the results. Always make sure to check your data against the costs of a campaign so you can better optimize your next initiative to reach your desired goals within your budget. If you are unsure how to approach your next direct mail campaign, consider working with One Stop Mail so you can write a new success story and overcome your financial limitations.  

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A Marketing Strategy that Targets the Consumer’s Desire to Save

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No matter what level of income someone makes, everyone cares about saving money. It is a misconception that coupon users are confined to a certain income level. In fact, recent studies have found that affluent shoppers do indeed care about saving and are receptive to offers. This is why it is important for companies to incorporate print promotions into their omnichannel marketing strategy.

Connecting People to Your Brand

Coupons are still one of the best ways to build a bridge between your brand and your potential customer. The desire to save money will never wane from people’s minds, and that is why it is so reliable. According to a Valassis study, 92% of shoppers use paper coupons and about half use them always or very often. With direct mail, you have an opportunity to target an age range that most would consider unreachable unless using a digital method. However, paper is still strong, and is not ending up in the trash but rather are being redeemed in stores.  The same study found that more than 50% of all consumers like receiving print coupons in the mail. It is clear that mail is still one of the strongest delivering methods for deals and other specials that can get more customers purchasing online or at your brick and mortar locations.

Influencing the Purchase of New Products

Trying to get consumers to switch to a new product from a different brand can be a challenge. A new marketing strategy can offer a variety of tactics that influence a shopper’s decision making, but one of the most effective methods has been tied to one’s desire to save money. A RetailMeNot survey found that about 80% of participants made a first-time purchase using a coupon. You can influence new customers with an offer that reduces the risk of trying something new and sets the foundation for new customer relationships.

Marketing Strategy that Incorporates Direct Mail

Providing opportunities for shoppers to save will never go out of style. Consider how effective your marketing strategy is now, and how much more you can improve its performance by adding a direct mail marketing campaign to the fold. Put the coupons right in the hands of the consumer so that you can empower them to make their next purchase without breaking the bank. In doing so, you will build a valuable relationship with new customers while also achieving the goals of new products. Contact us today to get started!

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Direct Mail Marketing Personalization Statistics That Outweigh The Cost

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How do you improve through the competition on the very crowded internet? By utilizing personalized direct mail statistics, of course. Instead of a standard digital banner – why not personalize it to match an individual’s interest. If you’d like to get a better result for a lower price, direct mail can fill the bill. Statistics show that millennials like mail, with 75% looking forward to getting it and 63% responding to a mailed offer in the past three months.

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Data and Direct Mail: The Marketing Dynamic Duo

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Direct mail remains as one of the most rewarding marketing assets available for anyone’s multichannel strategy. Marketers today now have better data to inform them on their target audience, allowing them to make their direct mail copy more impactful and well timed. This is why I am calling these two the dynamic duo, for they will be able to help you win the marketing battle with your direct mail campaign.

With Data Comes Deeper Personalization

 

Data tells us all the things we want to know about our target audience: their preferences, what they are most interested in, and where they are located. Rather than blasting out general direct mail pieces, you can now incorporate this data so that you can achieve deeper personalization and connect with people more meaningfully than ever before.  In fact, according to a JWT report, “almost eight out of ten Millennials—the biggest segment of B-to-B buyers

—said print makes them feel more connected than digital.” Moreover, according to an Epsilon study, more than half of the US consumers prefer direct mail over email. It seems we have achieved a role reversal. Before, most mailboxes were cluttered, making it more difficult to stand out with direct mail. Now, as mail volume has declined and email has gone up, it has made it easier for someone to engage with a direct mail piece since it removes the delete button out of the equation.

 

Direct Mail Is More Likely to Get A Response

 

With consumer interest still high with direct mail, you can expect greater engagement with your materials as well as an increase in consumer response. Email is much easier to ignore than a piece of direct mail. Most of us would expect that people would just shred their unwanted mail or open it while standing over their kitchen trash bin. However, 70% to 80% of consumers actually open most of their mail, including the stuff they would label as “junk.” according to a 2014 poll by the DMA. But the big kicker is how direct mail is able to transcend demographics, especially with younger people who you would assume respond significantly more to digital marketing campaigns over direct mail. On the contrary,  another study found that 92% of young shoppers prefer direct mail for making purchasing decisions. By informing your copy with data, you can give these shoppers the information they want to better influence their next purchase.

 

If you haven’t heard it enough before then here it is again—print is not dead. Though we are in an ever growing digital age, this has only allowed us to make our direct mail campaigns more effective. Take advantage of the data your team gathers, and use it to help you make more impactful print advertising materials for your next multi channel marketing campaign—  sharpening the spear tip for your direct mail.

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Direct Mail: A Dominating Force for Political Campaigns

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Digital marketing is currently the hot ticket right now. Politicians on both sides have found their own creative ways of incorporating social media into their campaigns. However, direct mail still continues to be the main cornerstone of political campaigns. This is because direct mail is effective at micro-targeting voters and getting information in their hands.

Targeting By Age Groups

 

Although most social advertising can target by age groups, it doesn’t account for the 45 % of seniors that do not have internet service The only way to reach these voters is through direct mail. According to the DMA Statistical Fact Book for 2015, 42% of direct mail recipients either read or scan direct mail pieces. It also states that 14% of people 45-54 respond to direct mail, while everyone above the age of 54 sits at an average of 13.2%.

The older generations are not the only ones who have a high average of responding to direct mail. The Fact Book also found that people between the ages of 18-24 are more likely to respond to a direct mail piece with a rise from 4.1% in 2012 to 12.4% in 2013. But there is one statistic that affects every age group, and that is how much mail people are receiving. The average household receives 19.1 mail pieces each week. That is down from 24.7 in 2008. That means your pieces have a better chance of being noticed as people sift through the mail.

 

Getting it Into The Voter’s Hands

 

With non-physical methods of advertising, there is a digital barrier that the campaign message has to overcome. With direct mail, you can put the message you want right in the person’s hands. Television advertising has become more expensive, and more difficult at getting the message across to the campaign target voter base. Much of this stems from the rise in DVRs and internet video streams, which allow voters to fast forward through advertising, or not be served as often.

Politico shared a case study that shows how critical a direct mail is to a political campaign. According to their article, Walter Lukens, founder of The Lukens Co., whose clients include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander, used direct mail to compete against McConnell’s competition, Matt Bevin. The piece Politico used depicts Bevin on the front as a snake oil salesman which reads: “Genuine Bevin Brand Snake Oil: Behold the magical potion being spoon-fed to Kentucky Conservatives far and wide.” When you turn the piece over, the reader will see a picture of a bottle with “half-truths, resume inflation, and delusions of grandeur” listed as the ingredients. McConnell was successful at beating Bevin, winning by 25 points.

Any successful political campaign will incorporate direct mail. Relying only on digital assets will cause you to leave out crucial voter age groups, miss opportunities to get in front of your overall voter base, and force a campaign to fight with one arm tied behind its back. Even with the rise of digital marketing, it is clear that direct mail is not going anywhere anytime soon.   

 

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Direct Mail Tracking Methods

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Often we judge an advertising campaign’s success by the amount of conversions, new customer acquisitions, or revenue. Without a definitive incentive or variety of direct mail tracking methods, it can be nearly impossible to tally the actual success of a campaign. Try to think of the last time a customer came into your business and without being asked gleefully said, “Hi! I just wanted to let you know I found you on Google or I came in because of ‘X’ marketing you did.” More than likely the experience is extremely rare if it has occurred. When tracking methods are implemented properly, the guesswork is eliminated and campaigns become more transparent through analytics.

Direct Mail Tracking Methods

The best use tracking methods will allow a company to understand the progress and success of an advertising campaign without reliance on the customer to take additional action.

Tracking Number

A tracking phone number can help understand conversion from cold prospect to a warm lead. With a dedicated tracking number, you can isolate the number of phone calls from one specific campaign. For example, Nick’s Pizza may use the tracking phone number (949) 555-5555 for his Direct Mail Marketing campaign only. The phone number (949) 777-7777 is used on a landing page tied to a Google AdWords campaign. Both phone numbers get forwarded to (949) 123-4567, the mainline for Nick’s Pizza. Nick can use the dashboard provided by his tracking service, Call Rail, to see how many calls are coming into each line. Nick is able to identify that in a 30 day period his pizza shop derived 327 orders as a result of sending out 2,000 Direct Mail Postcards.

Coupon

Cut out coupons are a great way to manually track offer redemptions. Tom’s Automotive is offering $10 off an oil change and $20 off a synthetic oil change to new customers. In addition, there are many great offers like a coupon for a completely free electronic diagnostic, a $60 value. In order to redeem the offers, the customer must cut out and present the coupon at Tom’s Automotive. At the end of the promotion, Tom is able to tally how many redemptions were made in addition to the total revenue spent by those customers and average customer spend. Tom is able to determine that offering a significant discount on an oil change allowed him to bring in 41 new customers and those customers spent $193 on average.

Reference Code

Companies trying to generate leads with Direct Mail Postcards or Mailer Letters can find great success and lead handling efficiency when using reference codes. Student Solutions, a student loan debt relief agency, has purchased a database of 100,000 individuals who have graduated college and are delinquent on their student loans. Their IT team has uploaded all prospect information into their CRM and attached a unique reference code to each prospect. Student Solutions utilizes Variable Data Printing to print letters that have the first and last name of each recipient alongside their unique reference code. Having a personally addressed letter created a higher conversion rate. The reference codes provide the Student Solutions employees a simple and non-intrusive method to bring up the prospects information when they call in for assistance. New sales can be filtered by all reference codes with the prefix PJ36. The company determines that mailing out 100,000 postcards created 3,000 new customers and generated $700,000 in gross profit.

Managing a successful direct marketing campaign requires knowing specific steps, including the most effective direct mail tracking methods. When it comes time to rely on a direct mail company with experience, contact One Stop Marketing for your printing, mailing list and delivery needs – call 602.962.5104 today.

 

This article is part 3 of a 3 part series covering:

The Advantages of Direct Marketing versus Branding
See These Irresistible Offer Examples to Help Entice Customers
Direct Mail Tracking Methods
Crafting a Successful Direct Mail Campaign

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The Advantages of Direct Marketing Versus Branding

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Anytime you’re creating a new marketing campaign, you may find yourself asking a slew of questions about the advantages of direct marketing and whether it matches your campaign goals. Will the objective of your campaign be to increase brand’s reach, acquire new customers, monetize your existing customer base or if you’re like most– are you unsure of what to expect? Understanding the difference and setting the correct expectations will infinitely improve mediocre advertising tactics and allow you to make the most of any campaign.

 

What’s the Objective?

 

If your marketing department functions like most, you’ve got an annual budget and department expectations that were established by upper management during the latter end of the previous year. We’re past the halfway mark and now the pressure is on, we need results. One of the most frequent questions we get is, what’s the difference between branding and are there specific advantages to direct marketing?

 

Brand Awareness – Think billboards. You’re driving on the freeway and see a catchy ad with cows telling you to eat more chicken. Some drivers familiar with the brand will get a laugh out of the billboard while others unfamiliar with the brand may connect the logo with a restaurant they see occasionally. The goal of this marketing method is to increase awareness and be visible to as many people as possible. Strictly defined sales goals are not to be expected of this method and more often than not, you won’t see strict tracking methods implemented with brand awareness campaigns.

 

Marketing – If the name doesn’t say it loud enough, direct-action result-based campaigns strive to provide a measurable increase in conversions. Whether the conversion metric is more newsletter signups or an X increase in new customers that translates into a Y increase in revenue, your campaign has set expectations and goals. Examples of these campaigns include coupons, limited time offers and opt-in campaigns.

 

The Purpose of Branding 

 

Increasing brand awareness may nearly impossible to correlate with monetization. For branding, reaching new, existing and potential customers is the objective. An example of an awareness through conversion cycle for a brand awareness campaign can look start with a direct mail postcard or billboard ad designed to peak your interest.

 

Fictitious pizza chain Chewy’s Pizza has been experiencing a slump in sales for nearly a decade. A focus group has revealed the brand’s image is struggling due to its low-quality pizza’s and sub-par taste. The pizza chain has decided to revamp its entire operation and will now use high-quality ingredients and focus on an artisan pizza rather than provide a bottom dollar product. The general perception of the brand needs to improve. Chewy’s Pizza runs radio ads, tv commercials and send postcard mailers to all homes within a 4-mile radius of a franchise in each market.

 

The advertisements emphasize a brand revitalization and commitment to top quality ingredients and taste. The messaging directs people to pizzamatters.com, a website the Chewy’s Pizza created to build value and modify existing perception of the brand. The company is monitoring campaign impact by keeping a close tab on the amount of unique and return visitors to the website. A conversion will be counted anytime an individual watches a video about the company’s new image or signs up for the mailing list.

 

The Advantages of Direct Marketing

 

For many SMB’s it is crucial to understand if a marketing effort is profitable, has the potential to become profitable or perhaps it’s a complete wash. Direct-action result-based campaigns strive to provide a short customer monetization cycle with a measurable value tied to each conversion. The ideal way to track campaign effectiveness is to use a variety of calls-to-action and tracking methods that will simplify how the results can be segmented.

 

Fictitious company Lazer manufactures computers and computer peripherals. The company has 50,000 addresses of previous customers but is having a difficult time engaging its fan base through emails and social media. Robert, Lazers sales director, has been tasked with spearheading a sale in an effort move stagnant inventory and make room for upcoming new products. The company decides to mail a scratch to win postcard to all previous customers. The direct mail marketing postcard offers vary with incentives ranging from 5%-50% discounts and a select few postcards have online-store gift cards or free item redemption codes.

 

The offer codes needed to redeem the incentives will allow Lazer to track how many customers redeemed offers, the campaign participants’ average spend if individuals purchased additional products and additional data to determine lifetime customer value and the potential for future monetization. Data shows Lazer that the campaign was able to provide a significant increase in revenue and was able to re-engage previous customers who had not made purchases in a long period of time.

Check out our helpful article for more information about building a great direct marketing mail campaign.

 

Which Do I Use?

 

Although branding and marketing can function in tandem, it is important to understand the difference in order to craft a successful advertising campaign. If your goal is to spread the word far and wide, branding could be the best solution to your advertising woes. Marketing campaigns have the benefit of being incentive based and allow time constraints to increase urgency. Next week we will discuss the difference between good offer and a fantastic one.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to get results on a direct mail marketing campaign, turn to experts with many years of direct mail experience. One Stop Mail can help you achieve your objectives — give us a call at 602.962.5104 or reach out to us here.

 

This article is part 2 of a 4 part series covering:

The Advantages of Direct Marketing Versus Branding?

Learn to Entice Customers with these Irresistible Offer Examples

Direct Mail Tracking Methods

Crafting a Successful Direct Mail Campaign