Archive for February, 2011

Do Direct Mail like The Locals

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

The combination of a weakened economy and the proliferation of new media has encouraged many companies to cut corners to reduce spending.  In most cases, marketing departments in many large corporations have begun opting for online communications over direct mail as a lower cost alternative. However, some local businesses stuck with traditional direct mail – even through the economic downturn – and now enjoying impressive results. 

Chantal Tode at Marketing Powers Activate recently spoke with local business owners regarding their direct mail successes and lessons learned. The takeaway? Local businesses aren’t planning to drastically cut direct mail spend and have proven that consistent communication plays a major role in developing significant customer relationships.

One example is a dental practice that implemented a marketing program including a newsletter and postcard mailing. Prior to implementing the campaign, this office typically had an average of fewer than 22 new patients per month. Post-campaign the average rose to 30-40 new patients, and revenue has increased $10,000 per month. With results like these, it’s evident that direct mail produces an increased return on investment.

It’s no surprise that technology has significantly improved over the years – not only with regard to new social media tools, tablets and smartphones, but also in relation to traditional direct mail. This technological growth for conventional tactics is often referred to as precision marketing.

Both local businesses and international corporations can take their direct mail a step further using precise data analytics to deliver a more customized and relevant communication to recipients. One might argue that precision marketing is not an optimal tool for securing new customers as we don’t have much data – but that’s not true. What it does mean is that a company’s data analytics solution must be strategically implemented across all areas of a business to ensure consistency and integration. 

For example, a company may know where their potential new customer lives and can market what is most relevant based on that specific location. Once the patient is in the door and their information is entered into the company’s computer database, the relationship with the consumer can grow to become more personal, allowing for the customer to feel a close relationship with the company. The business can then decide how they can utilize this information to implement precision marketing. This can mean deciding between direct mail and online communications, finding relevant and customized information to add to the document and much more.

Every type of business can make their own type of mailing, mining the appropriate data from their databases to implement a successful precision marketing campaign.

Will others realize the importance of keeping a streamlined, continuous communication with their customers via direct mail, in efforts to solidify a relationship with relevant, meaningful data? Largely it remains to be seen, but we’re interested in what you see and think.

What do you think? What are you seeing?

Best,

Mike Bryant

Worldwide Customer Strategy Practice Leader

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Posted in ADF, Multichannel, Precision Marketing | No Comments »

Hunkeler innovationdays Day 3: InfoPrint Solutions and Switzerland: Confidentiality Guaranteed

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

 Guess what InfoPrint Solutions and Switzerland have in common?  Certainly we share an appreciation of beautiful snow-covered mountains and fine chocolate, but our tastes diverge somewhat when it comes to cuckoo clocks! However, when it comes to technology both InfoPrint Solutionsand Switzerland value the importance of security.

Like Switzerland, where the Hunkeler innovationdays event is currently taking place, InfoPrint Solutions has customers in the financial services industries that are obliged to adhere to strict compliance guidelines. For these and other businesses, confidentiality, integrity and availability of all corporate and customer information are paramount.

There is safety in numbers. This is confirmed by the fact that the vast majority of InfoPrint Solutions’ production customers rely on the industry-standard AFP architecture known for its robust data control, security and integrity standards. And many of the customers and prospects who have visited our stand have told us that security is an important consideration in any technology and output environment.

We have built our reputation on helping customers meet security standards. As manual reprinting can leave print operations exposed to errors, we also offer the InfoPrint Mailroom Integrity ADF solution to automate this process and minimize risk.

For organizations issuing checks and other sensitive documents, we also have a number of MICR offerings to address this important issue, including the InfoPrint 5000 MP platform.

Don’t forget: safety doesn’t happen by accident. And don’t forget to check out all of InfoPrint Solutions’ latest news coming out of Hunkeler innovationdays here!

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Hunkeler innovationdays: Day 2 Report

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

InfoPrint Solutions was invited to give a presentation at “doxnet vor Ort” – a regional user group of around 300 German-speaking industry vendors, document composition software providers, outsourcers and in house-printers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

I did a presentation on precision marketing, popularly known as transpromo. We prefer now to call this technique precision marketing because relevant marketing messages are sent through many communication channels – and not only on statements, which is referred to as TransPromo. The channels include direct mail, mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone and email to name a few.

I enjoyed changing the conversation from hardware topics to focus on solutions, which can be just as significant as the printers themselves. One question that has become a matter of survival for many marketing managers is: “How can I communicate more effectively with my customers and measure my results?”

As you all know, precision marketing allows companies to speak to consumers in a targeted, customized fashion. You can use customer data to generate meaningful messages based on their consumer behaviour patterns. Another way to send personalized communications is as easy as targeting a specific group of residents in a particular neighborhood. Depending on the desired reach, product or services being offered and data you have to work with, the opportunities are vast.

InfoPrint Solutions has a portfolio of services to help our customers, outsourcers and industrial segment customers, including finance, utility and telco, to enable them to send relevant marketing messages. The first step is to implement a needs assessment workshop to investigate the current status of a company’s customer communication abilities, learn about their pains and needs, and their future communication strategy.
Next the customer must identify their needs; it could be a document composition, customer strategy, or data analytics job. If it is all of that packed together we call it a “Precision Marketing Pilot”. This is our proof-of-concept to show what additional potential revenue can be unleashed by applying precision marketing.

Personally, I want to add that it is astonishing to see how big Hunkeler innovationdays has become. The event’s growth and full aisles are hopefully an indicator that we will all have a good year ahead of us!

By Thomas Haas, EMEA Precision Marketing Principal

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Hunkeler innovationdays begins today: William Tell and Cupid’s Arrows

Monday, February 14th, 2011

This Day One report from Hunkeler innovationdays comes from Sara Bonini, Marketing and Communications Manager, EMEA.

Last time I was here in Lucerne at Hunkeler innovationdays, I explained why we were giving away apples. I won’t expect you to remember the reason, but we were honoring the legend of William Tell, who split an apple with a single arrow from his crossbow to gain his freedom and then created the Swiss Confederation in the early 14th Century.

As we are here in the country that produces some of the finest chocolate in the world on Valentine’s Day, our choice of giveaway was easy – red chocolate hearts with a Valentine card printed on our color printers. Very tasty. They are going like hot cakes!

To keep up the feel-good factor, especially for those of us away from home on such a special day, we are enjoying this beautiful location overlooking Lake Lucerne. It is mild, for winter, and sunny too.

Cupid and William Tell have something else in common – they both use arrows to reach their target. Here at InfoPrint Solutions, we too understand the value of pinpoint accuracy in reaching audiences. At Hunkeler we are demonstrating a selection of our customers’ Precision Marketing applications.

For many of our commercial printer customers, this means a whole new approach to sales and marketing. So our Professional Services team is here discussing new approaches that can help printers offer Precision Marketing services to their customers.

We can share experiences from many commercial printers who have successfully made the transition to high-speed color inkjet and have started delivering more valuable one-to-one marketing pieces.

Come along and say hello if you are here. If not, feel free to keep up with our posts from the show floor.

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Part III – ADF Savings Featuring Paul Abdool

Friday, February 11th, 2011

IKON Practice Manager Paul Abdool has already explained what an AppDF (Appropriate Document Factory) is and how it differs from an ADF (Automated Document Factory).  Now he’s back on the ADF Savings Blog offering some tips and tricks for successful ADF implementations.

Read more here: http://adfsavings.com/?p=193

Enjoy – Happy Friday!

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Is all “junk mail” junk?

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Most people receive direct mail whether they solicit it or not. It seems like a growing commonality for us all to complain about it and remove ourselves from mailing lists.  Recently AOL posted an article with advice from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse regarding how to limit the amount of unwanted direct mail a consumer receives, but not without initially pointing out a successful outcome of a “direct mail campaign.”

The article illustrates the success of one specific campaign, featuring recent Golden Globe nominee Geoffrey Rush.  In an unorthodox move the production team for The King’s Speech decided to send the full script directly to Rush’s home address in Melbourne, Australia.  While this type of solicitation is not the preferred method of communication, the bold move caught Rush’s attention and ultimately he agreed to sign on for the film.

This is obviously not a normal circumstance and the average consumer is not receiving screenplays as “junk mail.”  However, what is most important to note here is that this direct mail piece was relevant and customized for Rush, reducing the chance that he would toss it in the trash.  This should make the case for marketers: if you only send me what I am interested in, I will be much more likely to pay attention.

We are seeing this global trend of relevant and customized communications in direct mail and all forms of communications more frequently as we move into 2011.  Companies are realizing that they have customer data available and are putting it to use by creating relevant, timely communications.

Utilizing customer data enables companies to deliver direct mail pieces that are relevant to the audience, thus removing your communication from the “junk mail” category.  It would be great if we didn’t have to fish through “junk mail” to find the customized pieces.  Precision Marketing is the solution for delivering relevance, regardless of channel.  Together, we can move “junk mail” into extinction!

Best,

Amanda Thall

Global Solutions Marketing Manager

Posted in Multichannel, Precision Marketing, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »