Did you know that you could spend less on a direct mail campaign and actually see better results? It’s true. It’s not about marketing less. It’s about marketing smarter.

Let’s take a look at a real campaign produced for a travel company. Let’s call it Club Travel. In the past, Club Travel mailed static 30- to 72-page catalogs to hundreds of thousands of people. All of the catalogs were the same regardless of age, income or whether the person had purchased a travel package in the past. Recognizing the inefficiency of this approach, the company decided to try something new.

Club Travel selected 20,000 high-value targets (chosen based on age demographic, income, home ownership and other factors) and created personalized mailers based on customer status (active member, dormant member, prospect). It created custom messaging based on customer segment and layered on personalization by prospect or customer name.

To boost effectiveness, it used a series of personalized emails to prime the pump for the offer and nudge non-responders into action.

The results? Although the mailing was 80% smaller than in the past, by precisely matching the messaging to reach a prospect’s demographic profile, the campaign was far more relevant and more effective for each recipient. In fact, it generated a return of more than 10 times Club Travel’s initial investment in just the first month’s sales.

The cost? The personalized self-mailer boasted a lower cost per piece than that of Club Travel’s typical catalog of trip options.

In the end, this savvy marketer’s campaign was more effective, less expensive per piece and—as a nice side benefit—“greener” because the reduction in paper, energy use and solid waste resulted in a lower impact on the environment.

Many marketers might say, “But I don’t have the depth of database this company had.” Not to worry. You can purchase highly qualified lists or append your database with key variables, such as income, homeowner status and even specific interests (fly-fishing, golf, antiques) for a nominal additional cost.

If you invest in the right qualifiers, your return can be spectacular. Yet the total investment in the campaign can be less than you would have spent on a traditional direct mail campaign.

Case Studies, Data Segmentation, personalized marketing boost response rates, personalized mailing, personalized marketing, targeted marketing

If you have noticed your mailbox filling up again, there’s a reason. After a long period of decline, marketers are starting to mail again.

Print works. It might not twist and spin and play interactive games like online media, but it’s effective. In spite of the many predictions that print would continue to decline in favor of online media—even after the recession—as the U.S. economy recovers, marketers are now flocking back to print.

It’s Not Yesterday’s Print

But if you’ve noticed, it’s not yesterday’s print. Today’s print marketing looks very different from the “spray and pray” method traditionally used in the marketing world. This is smart print.

What makes it smarter?

1. It’s targeted. Today’s print is being segmented into shorter but more targeted runs. Marketers are segmenting their mailings based on any variety of factors, whether age, interest, ethnicity, or other demographic. They may be marketing the same or similar products to each demographic group, but they are speaking to them on a more targeted basis. This automatically makes the mailings more effective for very little additional cost.

2. It’s personalized. We’re living in the “age of me.” Consumers are used to personalized recommendations online and personalized discounts at the cash register. They have come to expect marketers to cater to them on an individual basis. With data-driven print (also called 1:1 printing, variable data, or personalized printing), marketers can provide the same kind of personalized attention in direct mail or any other printed piece. You can talk to each person by name and personalize messaging or offers based on what you know about them.

3. It’s multi-channel. Last year, J.C. Penney shocked the marketing world when it announced that it would stop printing its “Big Book” catalog in favor of slimmer, more targeted specialty catalogs. And there has been yet another collective marketing gasp as the giant retailer has announced that it will cease printing its specialty catalogs, too. Multichannel Merchant called the move “nuts.”

In fact, the retailing magazine reports that, after shutting down the Big Book last year, J.C. Penney has admitted that “ceasing [production] hurt total sales more than it had expected in the second quarter of 2010” (MCM, November 2010). Now the cataloger wants to stop mail order altogether? Consistently, research shows that print and online media have a symbiotic effect. When print and online channels (email, social media, Web) are used together, sales go up. When print is dropped in favor of online channels alone, sales go down. This is why print should always be part of any serious marketing strategy.

So forget about old print. It’s time to smart print: print that is targeted, personalized, and part of a larger multi-channel marketing campaign. Talk to us about making your print smarter!

Data Segmentation, Direct Mail, One-to-One Marketing direct mail, direct mail marketing, future of direct mail, multi-channel marketing, personalized marketing, smart print, targeted marketing

By Bruce Browning | Magjak

It’s happened to all of us: We hear a song on the radio that reminds us of another one we want to hear – so we go to iTunes to grab it, and the radio station loses our attention.

The consumer is in charge these days – even of the airwaves – and companies like Pandora Radio are scrambling to serve them better.

As its founder Tim Westergren puts it in a recent interview with Direct Marketing News, radio has reached a turning point: “At the core of that transformation is personalization. We’re migrating from a signal that’s broadcast to unicast, where people can create their own stations.”

Westergren understands that consumers want personalized products and services – and if they can’t get them through one source, they’ll just go to another.

So if you aren’t personalizing your marketing to the max, it’s time to get serious. Here are three steps to take to better personalize your customer outreach:

Collect more detailed customer information. Offer preferred customer discounts, private sales, or (for B2B companies) insider information to get prospects to give you their email addresses, ZIP Codes, expressed preferences, or other personal identifiers like age, gender, title, even birthdays.

Segment that information. Segment your customer data based on actionable factors like location, age group, buying power, product focus, contact preferences, even the tried-and-true recency, frequency, monetary (RFM) rankings.

Target. Now use your detailed information to better target your outreach. Do you want to send seasonal emails? Target products to preferences? Reward best customers? Send triggered birthday emails? Create social forums for specific groups?

Yes, this process takes work. But trust me: If you aren’t targeting your outreach to your unique customers, someone else will – and you’ll be in for quite a battle to win them back.

Campaign Effectiveness, Data Segmentation, personalized marketing

By Bruce Browning | Magjak

You know Magjak: We’re multichannel marketing’s biggest advocates. That’s because it keeps customers more engaged, turns up more prospects, targets better, and boosts ROI. Period.

And it also serves as profitability insurance: The more channels you employ, the better your options are for success in a customer-driven marketplace.

For all these reasons (and more), we’ve compiled a quick how-to guide to help you go more multichannel right now. Take these four steps:

Know your customers. Identify who they are, why they like you, how they engage with you, what they most want from you—as markets and preferences change.

Segment your data. Identify preference groups. Who likes what products or services? How are they learning about them? When do they buy? Why do they buy? Define your targets.

Study your current results. Match your efforts to your customer response. Be brutally honest: Which ones are working, and which ones aren’t?

Diversify. Now it’s time to brainstorm new ways to extend your outreach. Might your direct mail customers matched to your mobile segment respond to a barcode on your next mail piece? Might your less-active email subscribers link to a seasonal offer online? Will your active mobile customers click on a timely offer? Once you know your customers better, you can judge which direction to nudge them in—and find better ways to reach prospects just like them.

Keep your outreach fresh and engaging by keeping your marketing channel options wide open. That’s your best bet for success in an ever-changing marketplace.

Campaign Effectiveness, Cross-media campaign, Data Segmentation, Direct Marketing, Integrated Marketing Campaign, One-to-One Direct Marketing/Variable Data, personalized marketing

By Bruce Browning | Magjak

One way to boost customer engagement – and your ROI – is to add a string of PURLs to your outreach.

A personal URL (PURL) is a Web page personalized to each customer’s name and preferences, such as: www.yourcompanysite/JaneDoe or www.yourcompany/JohnDoe.

Just as digital printing brought us the ability to personalize each piece of mail to a prospect or customer, PURLs enable personalization on Web pages and in social media.

Does that mean that if you mail to 100,000 names you have to construct 100,000 unique Web pages to refer each recipient to a unique Web page? No. That’s the good news.

PURLs are built dynamically when the Web address is typed into a browser. It’s only at that point that the content of each page is tailored to each visitor using information such as the customer’s buying habits or preferences.

So www.yourcompany/JohnDoe.com and www.yourcompany/JaneDoe.com may both be directed to the same overall landing page template, but each visitor will experience it with their own name in the url and their own page content, including offers, pictures and text.

So, when Jane is looking for a new desk online, her PURL will be built dynamically based on her preferences. Your text can read something like, “Jane, we recommend the Tropical Mahogany desk and bookcase. 10% off.” And “Swivel chairs recommended for Jane.” That personal touch (translated as relevance) is proven to increase customer interest and conversions. Think Amazon and Netflix.

There are a host of other things PURLs can do to boost engagement and response – such as giving Jane an option to share what she sees on her Facebook wall, which can also be tracked and measured.

We’ll get into those details in a future post.

Campaign Effectiveness, Data Segmentation, Magjak Company News, microsites, personal micro sites, personalized marketing

By Richard H. Levey, Chief Marketer.com, Dec. 3rd, 2010

Dell will, of course, sell a computer to any interested prospect. But “You Can Tell It’s Dell”, a current campaign from the company’s Consumer and Small and Medium Business unit, is moving the focus away from mass marketing in favor of targeting four specific segments.

Each of the four groups – families with kids, mobile professionals, gamers and Gen-Y consumers – is being targeted with ads designed to appeal to it, and which additionally move away from price-focused, transactional advertising, according to Paul-Henri Ferrand, the CMO of Dell’s consumer and small and medium business unit.
Read more…

Cross-media campaign, Data Segmentation, Direct Marketing, Integrated Marketing Campaign