The first was a package from Google, providing me material on AdWords I’d asked about online. Much was a copy of their online stuff, but the printed, personalised AdWords vouchers with my name on it together with a Google-embossed (paper) notebook was slick.

Now Google has been using post and paper marketing for many years now. In fact when they were small, they used print ads and direct mail to market themselves. Again, nice to know they seen the real value of cross-channel marketing to keep in touch with customers.

The second paper package was a nice introductory letter from AWeber, a large, successful email marketing provider in the US I’d recently signed up with.

These people are nothing if not professional. Even though their money is made online and with email communication, they still saw the benefit in using print to communicate with new clients. A really nice touch. They obviously didn’t consider the high cost ($2.50) of sending me this item an issue,, but instead considered the lifetime value of having me, as a client… The fact that they invested a little bit more on me, placed them above many others in this sector. Although their services are more for the amateur than professional market, I like them and will stay with them I think.

I also heard this week that the might Amazon are still producing and distributing printed catalogues in the US. This seems silly, yet they have obviously found a niche within their product range, that still prefers and responds to a printed version! There’s other e-retailers up there who do the same.

Print still works and has a place.

These are just a couple examples of where print can fit in the mix and bring you closer to your customers. The value of tangible communications over electronic should never be underestimated. In several e-Commerce examples I’m aware of, complimenting direct mail with email communications to existing key customers improves sales by around 15-25%.  Not a bad ROI. And those customers coming in via the direct mail route have a higher lifetime value, and buy more. (read here)

Online marketers here, with their heads stuck firmly in the digital sand, could learn a lesson from these industry leaders.

It gets better. As a real-world example, last month I did our first DM and email campaign with personal urls included, to promote an educational workshop in Auckland for digital print and mailing providers. A small list to around 500. The purl tools provided by www.boingnet.com included slick reporting and charting, telling me response rates, when each person visited their own purl landing page etc. But to improve things, I decided to add in my own getclicky.com analytics, which unlike Google, provide me visitor feedback in real time.

With either the boingnet or clicky automated alerts, I could now call up the person minutes after they arrived at their purl page, since I setup filters and special email alerts to my mobile phone. It’s interesting when you phone people at this point. They say, “what a co-incidence. I was just now visiting your website”.

This is obviously very good from a marketing and sales perspective. In sales, good timing and follow-up is everything.

But I’ve always been unsure of what to tell them as to why it happened. Should I tell the truth and say “actually, my system told me you were on my site”. Some people I’ve told are surprised and others annoyed, or both. They’re simply not aware that they can be tracked like this. For us older people, thoughts of Big Brother arise, from George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984.

Back to reality. The other ‘handy’ and very powerful marketing idea I got from this is that I can now use this same visitor data obtained off the purl sites to track these people or companies when they visit my main website too. It’s made easy since most are on broadband these days and have a static IP address, which my clicky analytics allows me to tag with the company and/or visitors name. It’s not a perfect system, but would be correct around 90% of the time. Traditionally to track someone to the individual meant them logging into my website at some stage and picking up a ‘cookie’ or similar. Easier perhaps if you’ve an ecommerce site established.

I suspect most of the high-end ‘digital marketing systems’ available today do all this much better than my cheap package put together in an evening. But regardless of the tools chosen, the bottom line is I now know which of the clients/prospects in my database is visiting my website on a day to day basis, in response to various marketing efforts, be they online or offline. Good warm sales leads for sure.

Now we have the power, how do we use it?

But knowing about all this and the business potential, how do we best promote it as an industry?

Firstly, do software vendors do a proper job of telling marketers and business owners what’s possible and the underlying business benefits? This is powerful stuff and if utilized well, could easily double many a company’s sales and growth potential, quite quickly.

Secondly, do we have any responsibility to tell customers who receive our direct mailers or email communications, then visit our website that they are being tracked this meticulously? We know who they are, what they do on our site, how long spent on each page. Every click is tracked. Remember these are somewhat casual visitors or clients. They’ve not yet logged into our site with the intention of buying stuff.

Yet this tracking technology helps the business out in many ways. For example over time it can tell us which products or areas are of most interest and perhaps give early warnings of items we should or shouldn’t stock. The savings could be huge. Those in the retail or fashion markets especially. We can see which of our web pages have a high bounce rates and may need to be modified either by design or an improved offer.

There’s good science behind all this that can turn things around for many companies large and small. Anyone who has read the works of Bryan Eisenberg will know what we mean. But at what point does good marketing science cross over to an invasion of privacy?

My guess is that until the wider public learns that such things are happening, there won’t be a problem. After all, it’s good for business.

ps. This article to appear in the upcoming issue of www.DIRECTMAG.net.au

A while back, my Australian partner Malcolm Auld sent me a piece by a ‘marketing expert’ named Tom Evans, which stated that "direct mail for customer acquisition is dead." You should still put your money into direct marketing, said Tom — but do it online.

After reading that, I rushed to the phone as fast as my little legs would carry me. I had a client who was sending out 48 million direct-mail pieces a year to get business. I had to warn him. He needed to know that the game was up. Direct mail was dead. Run for your lives, everyone!

But he pooh-poohed my warning.

"We’re the only big firm in our industry doing well," he said. "Everyone else is in a mess. Our main competitor can’t even service their bank loans. I think I’ll just ignore this Tom Evans chap, being as we’re doing so well."

Every time I hear that something is dead, especially if it comes from an expert, I remember Mark Twain’s reaction after reading his own obituary in a newspaper. The telegram he sent to the editor read, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

In his piece, Tom Evans presented what he considered to be compelling evidence that direct mail for customer acquisition is finished. The evidence: Direct-marketing spending decreased by 12 percent over the last year, driven by a shift away from direct mail and promotional material delivered door-to-door. And the top 10 direct-mail users had spent 40 percent less on direct mail.

Not only that, but he quotes Justin Basini, vice president of marketing for Capital One bank (once a top three direct-mail user), as saying that they were getting out of direct mail and putting their customer acquisition "resources" (which is marketing-speak for money) into online marketing. "Sending out loads of direct mail with [credit card] application forms isn’t working anymore," said Basini.

From all this it is but a short leap to conclude, as Tom did, that "direct mail will always be important and it will still play a large part in direct marketing for many years to come, especially with regards to customer retention. However as a vehicle of customer acquisition it’s finished. Digital does the job more cost effectively and in a word, better."

But, unlike Capital One, my client was not in the financial services business. He was in home-improvement. And what works for a financial services business doesn’t apply to everyone.

And there is more naivety in Tom’s piece. On the matter of lead generation, he says that when you generate leads online, "the Cost per Acquisition model… is a no-lose and no-risk proposition. Marketers can simply request a set number of sales leads for a guaranteed fixed cost. If the lead quality is up to par, calculating the ROI is straightforward."

The man inhabits wonderland. This would be true — except for one thing. As more and more businesses recognize the joys of online customer acquisition, more and more will be willing to pay more and more to get those leads… or settle for fewer.

The same thing happened with e-mail marketing. Once it got amazing results. Now it doesn’t.

And guess what the smart people in online marketing are doing? They’re telling everyone to start testing offline. So whilst I — and most of my clients — have switched many of our efforts online, we are not so foolish as to believe that this is the only means of succeeding. We are interested in integrating our efforts.

Yes, it is true that, right now, online marketing in general tends to return a better ROI, but it is also true that many online marketers are being more imaginative than the direct mailers. 

Not long ago, for example, I wrote a direct-mail promotion that doubled response for an insurance firm. It wasn’t because my stuff was so brilliant but because what these people had been running was so bloody awful.

It has been about 10 years since a drunken creative director in a bar in Kuala Lumpur told me (I was not exactly sober either) that e-mail would kill direct mail. Now Tom Evans — whose chief interest in publishing his words of wisdom, of course, is to attract clients — says online is the answer to a maiden’s prayer.

And so it is, and will be for a while. But in the long term, results will determine where marketers put their money. As Bertrand Russell remarked, "What men seek is not knowledge, but certainty." You won’t find it in just one medium or one marketing discipline. That’s kindergarten stuff.

Here, it starts with your existing mailing database of happy clients, but then the idea is to send out postal mailers to their neighbours. When you think about it, you’re kind of using a referral technique, but in a cunning, low cost way.  One of the elements of this strategy I’m looking into, is how easy it is here in NZ to find out those neighbours names, as well as the obvious addresses. It would appear to be easy in the US market.

There are perhaps privacy concerns. However one can’t but marvel at the general idea. Some of the comments from readers of the original article are just as interesting…

Wall Street Journal, 12 January 2010

Looking to cut costs amid the recession, Alicia Settle initially thought it would be a good idea to eliminate her company’s annual direct mailing.

But after swapping snail mail for email, saw a 25% drop in orders.

Spending about $20,000 on the personally signed letters, which offered customers a discount on early orders, seemed indulgent for Per Annum Inc., which sells city diaries, albums, and planners in the struggling corporate gift market. But after swapping snail mail for email last year, Ms. Settle saw a 25% drop in early orders compared with the same period the previous year.

"We realized we had made a huge mistake," says Ms. Settle, president of the New York firm.

The affordability of e-marketing, along with the explosion of social media and the desire to trim costs in the recession, has prompted many small companies like Per Annum to slash traditional direct-mail budgets. U.S. consumers received about 5.2 billion pieces of direct mail in the third quarter of 2009, a 27% decline compared with 7.1 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to Mintel Comperemedia, a research firm that tracks direct-mail marketing.

However, some entrepreneurs who were quick to write off direct mail as too pricey or passé are finding it’s not so easy to dismiss.

Ms. Settle says that at first she blamed the economy for the dropoff, until she "started hearing from customers that they never got their ‘reminder’ in the mail." Ms. Settle quickly sent a postcard mailing in June, which recouped the 25% loss, she says.

Costs are still taken into account. Many entrepreneurs find that the boiler-plate methods of the past—such as purchasing mailing lists and sending fliers or coupons to a mass audience—often aren’t cost-effective. Instead, business owners are creating personalized mailings, which may include special offers or other valuable information, and sending them to a hand-picked list of current and prospective customers.

The idea is to send something that’s more appealing than "junk" mail and more noticeable than an email message

The idea is to send something that’s more appealing than "junk" mail and potentially more noticeable than an email message, says Eric Anderson, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. That allows business owners "to offer a personal touch the larger firms may not be able to have," he says.

To save money, Peter Taffae, founder of ExecutivePerils, a Los Angeles wholesale insurance broker, stopped his small firm’s humorous postcard mailings last year. The colorful marketing pieces showcase the insurance broker’s offerings through satirical movie themes, such as "Full Metal Policy," a parody of "Full Metal Jacket" and "Singin’ in the Renewal," from the classic film "Singin’ in the Rain." About 2,000 current and potential clients received the postcards, which cost the company $4,000 to send out every four to six weeks.

Customers complained when ExecutivePerils dropped its humorous postcards.

"We would visit some clients and notice they were hanging the postcards on the wall, collecting them," says Mr. Taffae, who says he secured $270,000 from a new client who chose to do business with the firm in late 2008 after receiving the postcards.

"After two or three months [of no postcards], we got a lot of emails and phone calls asking us, ‘Did you take me off your list?’ I figured if even 1% complained, then a much larger percentage were thinking about it," says Mr. Taffae, who restarted the postcard mailings in November.

William Kapas, president of J.C. Kapas Real Estate Co. in Rochelle Park, N.J., says he has secured clients as a result of his high-gloss, four-color monthly mailings that list who has bought or sold restaurant properties though the firm.

"Our clients look forward to knowing, and it’s a little bit of gossip, too," says Mr. Kapas, who exclusively uses traditional mail to reach clients. "I think it’s easier to delete the electronic junk mail without taking a second look."

Mr. Kapas spends about $1 a piece for the monthly mailings, sent to about 2,200 current and prospective customers.

Prof. Anderson says other business owners are trying to figure out how to integrate Web marketing—such as email campaigns, banner ads and social-networking sites—with direct mail. "The introduction of new media has forced [business owners] to go back and revisit the whole playbook on what’s the best way to communicate with customers," Mr. Anderson says.

plans to use e-marketing to complement the hand-signed direct-mail piece, not replace it.

Ms. Settle, for instance, plans to use e-marketing to complement the hand-signed direct-mail piece, not replace it.

Meanwhile, Mr. Taffae is starting to take his satirical marketing approach to YouTube; he’s created a parody of F Troop, the 1960s sitcom, to promote his firm online.

Ed. These stories are more common than many would like to admit, both here in NZ and overseas. Several catalogue mailers who took everything online last year are coming back to print, as email alone resulted in a major drop off in sales. The trick is how to effectively combine these media channels, in a cost-effective manner.  Analysing your customer base and segmentation I think is the key. Send printed plus online mailings to your top 40% of clients (who make up 80% of your sales), and online versions to the others – But always giving everyone the option of receiving either, or both versions.

Related Article: Direct Mail Brings 15% More Sales for Online Shop  and  Birthdays Bring in the Customers

It’s a common cry that applies to both direct mail and advertising generally. Sales are static and not increasing, even though we’re spending more on marketing and even becoming more creative in our copy or offer.

Rafi Albo talked of three key elements to a high response  campaign.

• A good, highly segmented mailing database,
• Superb creative with a real WOW factor
• A compelling, highly relevant offer.

The Forth Element – Sequencing

However there is a forth, often overlooked element to a successful direct mail campaign – Sequencing.

There’s old saying in sales and one reminded to me just last week in a weekly podcast from my favourite sales trainers at salesroundup.com. “Statistics show most sales take at least 5 contacts with a client or prospect.  In fact, 80% of sales are made on or after the fifth contact.  Many sales people never make it to 5. A lot of them stop trying to connect after the first or second attempt. Even worse if a client DOES buy most sales people don’t bother with any follow up communication.”

So too in direct mail and particularly with email campaigns. One mailout or sales letter to a new prospect simply isn’t enough. Never has been. It needs multiple ‘visits’, but in a highly planned, sequenced manner.

Below is a tiny extract from a 90min training workshop by Dan Kennedy in the US that explains sequencing. Dan has built dozens of successful businesses over 30+ years, and now provides this extensive, highly practical know-how to others. And for the record, Dan isn’t just a direct mail fanatic, but encourages the use of all media channels, online and offline.

In this 5 minute audio extract he covers a specific example used by a restaurateur. Click on the mp3 graphic below

dan

Note he also talked about the need for a MARKETING SYSTEM. This is something we’ll elaborate on in later articles.

If you’re a small businessperson with only a couple hundred regular customers, then usually there’s few problems. Send out small batches of flyers as blind copies (bcc) from MS Outlook, with a message and the attach the pdf file. For bills, they’re sent out individually. Very cost-effective.

However if your customer base is in the hundreds or thousands, you’ve suddenly a major technological and logistical problem.

Firstly, few ISPs (Xtra, iHug, Orcon etc) will appreciate you sending out a bulk emails like this. Sending more than 50 or so will often raise alarm bells and you’d be accused of spamming. Possibly shut down. Perhaps after weeks of negotiation and IT or software modifications you’ll overcome this, but then note your internet connection bills are on the increase. Especially so if you send the pdf as an attachment and the file itself is several MB in size. i.e. 5MB x 5000 recipients = 25GB of traffic data, which is often a businesses entire monthly allocation.

Quickly your IT people and/or email provider will see the obvious solution. Place the pdf file on your website, with a link in the email for people to download. That way, the data transfer requirement and allowance becomes your customers problem, not yours. Sounds a great idea.

Good in Theory – Bad in Practice?

The problem is that your website and email logs tell you that very few people are downloading the file and [hopefully] reading it or printing it out. And if you’re sending out e-bills, you note that overdues go up, often dramatically.

Let’s say you send out say 1,000 marketing emails, yet the logs indicate only 50-100 people have clicked the link to downloaded the pdf! There seems to be a general reluctance for people to click on links within emails. In fact a typical industry ‘click-through’ rate is only 20%. If we tie this in with the industry 30% figure for those that even open the email, we have just 6% opening and reading the pdfs!

Now we may have saved 70% of our costs by going to email, but if the result is that over 90% of our customers or prospects don’t even see see the material, we’ve a major problem on our hands… 

Unfortunately this story is common. It’s a quirk the banking people have noted too when they migrated from paper to email distribution. e-Billing was inevitably set up to send out an email with a link, for people to then login and download/view the bill online. They found that it took quite a while for people to want to go through this process. Bills became overdue and complaints came in, with many reverting back to paper versions. A migration of just 15% per annum is now deemed a ‘success’ even though twice this amount was predicted by the ‘experts’.

What can we learn from all this?

Firstly, there’s nothing wrong with sending out pdf bills or brochures, if that’s what your customers prefer and you can save some cash. I’ve been a huge fan of pdf technology for years. Certainly in the B2B market, sending e-brochures and e-bills makes a lot of sense today. There’s some superb toolsets around too, including transpromo options, being the inclusion of marketing promotions and offers within the bills themselves. To date most see transpromo stuff as a printing initiative, but the reality is that if it can be printed, it can be turned into a highly personalised, highly relevant pdf and emailed out too. What’s more, e-bills or flyers can be tracked electronically, which has immense benefits to both marketers AND accountants.

Actually there’s good money to be made for innovative service providers and specialist direct mailing shops, once they get their head around the fact that they still retain the key data processing and have new ‘delivery’ income. NZ Post and Xerox are the main losers, although in some market segments, migration will be slow, and for good reasons too. Paper, Xerox and NZ Post will be with us for a while yet….

However what’s critical in this online migration exercise, is that people usually prefer to have any pdf flyers/bills arrive as an email attachment, NOT a link to a website and/or tied in with complicated logins. Somehow e-billing has become the domain of IT and website developers, needless creating an other level of complexity and costs. It should have stayed with the billing people who can more easily create the needed pdfs, being an exact copy of the paper versions. It’s really a delivery issue…

Admittedly with email delivery there’s IT issues, spam filters and subject lines to consider, since these factors alone often determine if the recipient will even open the email, let alone any attached pdf file – But that’s another [big] topic.

Let’s do it right

But there’s little doubt it can all work well if done right – It’s just that almost no one does so because they simply don’t understand the human dynamics or technological issues. A few utility companies in the UK have lead the way, sending out e-bills as pdf attachments to an email. The results were that lots more people opened the bill and then paid on time. In one case, overdues dropped by over 50% which has big cashflow and overhead benefits. (read more)

If your market accepts it, and done right, pdf creation-distribution of flyers and bills saves a fortune.  Instead of around 70c-$1.00 per item, using pdfs and electronic delivery reduces this to under 20c. If transpromo options are introduced, sending out bills can actually generate additional income, over and above what’s due.

However if too few people open, then  read the pdf, it’s all a wasted exercise.

So, if you’re looking for an integrated campaign that distributes pdf flyers or e-bills the RIGHT WAY, talk to us.

email zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek

Yes, it seems we’re expensive and years behind in adoption of new marketing tools and methods. We like to talk of new technologies that will save us and expand boundaries, yet we’re still not doing the basics right. It appears we can do nice TV ads, but little else. Examining some of our letterbox mail reveals even our direct mail strategies are old world. We’ve been conditioned to accept 0-2% response rates when 3-5% is becoming the norm overseas. The very best average a staggering 12-15%!

What New Methods?

New database marketing practices lower overall marketing costs and also help boost sales results, especially for retailers. But making it happen comes down to a real desire to become more efficient, less wasteful. Additionally, there’s often a fear of databases and vested interests within most creative agencies to keep the status quo. Real change may mean finding a new supplier!

It’s a ‘Green’ initiative. A question of sending out relevant mailers, only to those that want them..

It also comes down to wanting to understand our customers better and getting our hands dirty with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) toolsets. Easy perhaps for large retailers like Sainsbury in the UK and even Myer in Auzzie. They can utilise their loyalty program customer data to build targeted direct mail campaigns. It’s cheaper than mass advertising and far more effective.

Highly personalised, relevant full colour offers in the mail is extremely rare here, even though the technology is readily available. Even the big retail chains here with customer data don’t do it properly, with their handful of direct mailers using little more than adding a first name to a generic postcard. They say they do more, but it’s not obvious. Even our utility and credit card accounts that also have ample transactional data are 5-10 years behind the best in the world practices - Are we being lazy, or just lack the skills?

So, we’re ineffective and way behind – Can we catch up?

To gauge what’s required, compare what’s commonplace in the US market from the video below. It reminds us to always look at mailer design from a customer perspective. Smarter direct mailers are performing very well in the US. Because these well-targeted direct mail promotions really work, it’s been a hidden goldmine, especially for small businesses, helping them get more customers and sales.

If any of these ideas or items in the video bring you inspiration, email zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek.

P.S. Think the fancy CRM systems that drive all this are only for the big corporates and national retail chains? Wrong. Smart, more affordable online systems now bring easy loyalty and CRM technology to small business  – In fact for those starting afresh, with no legacy systems in place have a big advantage.

Need more proof ? Read Double Your Rewards, our Rafi Articles, the Insight out of chaos website and GAWright retail marketing video

Wow, times have changed. In the two-plus years in my job as editor of Inside Direct Mail, the multichannel universe has exploded.

Few direct mail pieces and the companies behind them can afford to be without a comprehensive and coordinated multichannel marketing plan—and the Web site as a major part of it all.

"It is more important today than ever that direct mail campaigns be integrated with multichannel online campaigns," declares Michael Bloom, general manager of direct marketing operations for New York-based Datran Media. "The goal of every marketer in our rapidly evolving direct marketing landscape must be to deliver speed and convenience to consumers by enabling them to engage and transact easily via the channel they are most comfortable with."

For many, usually sooner than later, that inevitably involves their Web sites, perhaps moments after prospects get the mail pieces. Here’s how your Web site can best support your direct mail (and vice versa).

1. Be very consistent.
According to Bloom, direct mail works most effectively with Web sites when the offers, creatives and engagement processes are consistent across the multiple channels. In some ways, it’s remarkably simple: Consumers driven online by direct mail are most likely to convert on Web site offers when the look and feel of their Web site experiences are consistent with the look and feel of their direct mail experiences.

"The objective of a Web site must not be to compete with direct mail," Bloom points out. "Rather, Web sites must enhance the consumer’s multichannel experience." He mentions that while the golden ticket for each company always should be to increase the consumer’s total engagement across all marketing channels, it’s vital for companies to track the performance of each channel in contributing to that engagement. One easy way to track the impact of direct mail on Web site traffic is by including a specific source code or tracking number on the direct mail piece, which consumers must then type into the Web site to "unlock" valuable rewards.

But consistency must not be confused with replication. Bloom mentions that one of the worst things you will see is the marketer that takes the same content from a direct mail piece and basically slams it onto a Web site without modifying anything—content, text, even the layout itself.

2. Go beyond simply calling out the URL in the mail piece.
In addition to prominently calling out the URL multiple times in the direct mail piece, Bloom mentions that there are many effective strategies for promoting Web site traffic.

"Offering desirable Web site-only ‘rewards’ certainly captures everyone’s attention," he says. Such rewards could be discounts, coupons or exclusive offers available only on the Internet. "What’s really happening here is that the companies are using their Web sites as a real draw to get consumers excited in coming to them and then reward them [for their visit]," he describes.

Also, Bloom suggests teasing consumers with informative excerpts from Web site pages to promote interest and incorporating universal Web site icons—like the pointing finger, hourglass or other recognizable "moticons"—into the direct mail creative to demonstrate that you are an Internet-friendly multichannel marketer.

3. Understand the growing and vital role of the Web site in direct mail.
"Not long ago, I would have said that a Web site supports direct mail," says Gary Hennerberg, a copywriter and direct marketing consultant based in Colleyville, Texas. "Today, I think direct mail supports a Web site. I’m not sure you can ‘integrate’ direct mail and your Web site, (read comment below), but there certainly must be continuity and consistency of offers."

Bloom agrees and states that Web sites at the very least should deliver an additional and convenient channel for consumers to engage with companies. "It was a common misconception in the early years of the Internet that the consumers who shopped and purchased via the Internet were a completely disparate group from the consumers who shopped and purchased via direct mail. That is certainly not the case anymore, and traditional direct mail buyers are clearly the very same consumers who are now also shopping online via Web sites," he explains.

4. Approach your customers in a very coordinated fashion.
With so many tools at a marketer’s disposal, it’s easy to overdo it and be inconsistent with messaging as well as not maintain a good frequency of touches.

For Datran, Bloom has found good contact sequencing to be sending an e-mail one week short of an in-home date for the direct mail piece, and then following up that direct mail piece a week later with an e-mail. "What you want to avoid is a mail piece showing up in the consumer’s home with no regard to any of the other offers they are getting via other channels," he reminds.

5. Instill their confidence with the Web site.
Many direct mail buyers still approach Web sites with caution, so you must reassure them immediately about the security [and credibility] of your Web site.

"One of the most critical aspects of any Web site are the corporate branding elements—logos, taglines, images, etc.—which convey to consumers a consistent and reputable experience that builds their confidence and assures them that by transacting online they will enjoy the same quality buying experience as they have always enjoyed via direct mail," states Bloom, who says that other strategies to build consumer confidence online are to include logos reflecting transactional security, prime credit cards accepted, Good Housekeeping seals, industry awards, etc.

6. Optimize your Web site, and keep it evolving!
The general aim of the Web site is to keep customers actively involved with your company and expand their opportunities for engagement.

"The best ways to do that are by providing the latest information about your company and by delivering a logical, intuitive, relevant and rewarding experience," says Bloom.

Hennerberg offers a cautionary note, however. "I think there should be a huge concern to anyone using direct mail who is pushing response to a Web site. When a consumer reads direct mail, and you point her to your Web site, she might research other offers for identical products using keywords and key phrases that organically bring up competitive offers. If the direct mail offer didn’t sell her on doing business with you, she might find a competitor online, who has optimized their Web site, and get a better deal than you were offering," he warns. In other words, optimize your Web site to cut down on such a possibility.

Lastly, Bloom doesn’t want you to think of your Web site as a static tool in your marketing arsenal. "This is an ongoing, evolutionary vehicle. The beauty of it is that there are very short lead times to make improvements."

end.

However NZ Post provides lots of ways to save money.

There’s various factors that help save you money on stamps. Item size, weight, envelope design and volume. However by far the most important is the quality and accuracy of your mailing list.

As has been adopted overseas, NZ Post has implemented a postcode system that streamlines letter sorting and distribution activities thereby lowering their costs. With over 10% of mail being returned each day (that’s 500,000+ per business day), generous discounts help provide real incentives for businesses to participate in the programme.

All about SOAs (Statement of Accuracy)

Below we outline the NZ Post SendRight Address Accuracy Programme and the obtaining of an SOA bulk mailing certificate. The programme not only helps the effective delivery of your mail, but participation means real savings in postage costs.

Mailhouse Data Processing Procedure

Once we have received your mailing list data, we tidy it up into a format for printing that matches NZ Post requirements. We also de-dupe the data and if required, add salutation and generally tidy it up. We then run it though our smart software which does the following:

• Validate customer address data against New Zealand Post Postal Address File (PAF)
• Attempts to fill in missing data such as postcodes as well as correct or insert suburb and street names. (This will only be done where it is confident of a correct result.)
• Generate Statement of Accuracy (SOA) for SendRight postal compliance

N.B. We obtain an initial percentage for those that match and receive a report for addresses that do not match. The objective is to obtain a good match (ideally 85% or better), in order to obtain the best discount from NZ Post on those items with certified addresses.

Any figure below 85% means that the client is billed the difference. e.g. If the match is only 80%, then the client is billed full price on just 5% of the total mailing volume. (The exact discount obtainable is subject to other NZ Post terms and conditions like weight, timing, urgency etc - Ask for details).

A Quick ROI

The cost to get to this point is not overly expensive either, and for those with a large database of 2,000 or more, there’s usually a quick ROI. If the overall match is low, we can check and repair the addresses for those not obtaining a match. The cost is proportional upon the size and condition of the list or data provided and is costed on a simple per item repaired basis. If this extra cost is an issue, the client can check/repair their own list, using tips and guidelines available from NZ Post and various third parties.

Once completed, we then update the data with the new and original addresses and then run it through our software again to gain a final percentage which is submitted to NZ Post each time you have a mailing. This number is valid for a period of 12 months.

Envelope Design issues – Note also that for some mail types other conditions do apply to qualify for the above discounts. These are primarily around the letter format, dimensions, weight and design. Other future articles will outline this aspect in more detail.

Example NZ Post cost savings:

This varies, dependent upon the size, timing and minimum volumes of at least 1,000 per lodgment. For standard DLE letters the postage drops from 50c to 37.27c per item (gst inclusive). However larger A4-sized mailers can provide much larger savings.

e.g. Instead of the normal $1.50 NZ delivery, an A4 catalogue or newsletter mailing with a SOA certificate having 85% or greater accuracy reduces the cost per item to just $0.74. This means for a run of 5,000 A4 mailers with the ideal 85-100% address accuracy, the cost is now just $3,600 instead of $7,500, a handy saving of $3,900.

For those sending more regularly like Publishers with their monthly or quarterly magazines, subject to certain conditions, prices for these can drop to as low as 58c per item (gst inclusive) instead of $1.50, providing a huge 62% saving.

P.S. Change of Address Management

NZ Post have recently instituted a new service to help businesses and publishers better manage change of address issues. As around 20% of the population moves each year, this is a critical element to help ensure that every mailing gets to the recipient. As every bad address is time and money wasted, then a quick ROI is assured.

However, if you can replace that insert with a targeted colour message on the prime document, you can be sure that the consumer will look at that message for between 1-3 minutes. Due to the increased attention to your message, response rates can increase by anything up to 800%. This is why `true transpromo` mailings are so exciting to customers.

A statement is a statement, right?

WRONG. Using a combination of bold design, colour print and variable data, you can turn your statement (or any transactional document) into valuable marketing tools that allow you to both retain and inform customers. By using, or allowing others to use, the white space on your transactional documents it is now possible to generate valuable extra revenue. This action will bring excellent results with customer acceptance.

Already 20% of the UK’s top 100 loyalty schemes are now printing transpromo adverts in the white space of their statement mailings, a report has found.

The recent study from GI Solutions Group’s direct mail division, GI Direct, found that the music and entertainment, mobile phone and electronics industries had employed the strongest transpromo initiatives. The least advanced schemes were found in the credit card issuers and travel agency sectors. Patrick Headley, sales and marketing director at GI Direct, said: "As pressure is mounting on marketers to achieve improved return on marketing investment in 2009, harnessing transpromo for cross sales, or to subsidise scheme costs through third party advertising revenue, is turning into a commercial imperative."

The recession has created a timely opportunity for companies to capitalise on transpromotional advertising and design opportunities within billing and statement documents, DST Output has said.

In a recent survey commissioned by the company, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they reviewed their bills more closely to check their accuracy and to look to opportunities to cut them. The most reviewed bills were found to be those from credit card, energy and mobile phone companies. The survey also highlighted that more consumers were delaying payments until final demands, or are more readily switching suppliers. (A customer retention strategy beyond the traditional ‘enhancing of brand’ via mass market media, or product discounting is needed to resolve this growing concern).

DST Output chief executive Tim Delahay said: "More than half the respondents questioned stated that they are looking to change service suppliers – now is the time that businesses must use every communications channel open to them effectively to keep customers loyal.  "Work with our clients has shown that businesses who invest in clever design and targeted messaging on bills and statements can reduce debtor days and improve relationships with customers."

For example, David Frey introduces this amazing case study. Here, a rather plain-looking direct mail letter and discount card did the trick. It has a good story line and real down-to-earth appeal. It is the right kind of message to the right audience. It likely wouldn’t work in all industry sectors, but it certainly did in this example, giving a huge ROI. Just figure out WHY it worked, and you’ll discover some of the hidden secrets to successful small business marketing. My own view is that this particular type of message with the bride as a trigger invokes our emotional side. It makes us view the company at a more personal level, not just another business looking for our money.

It proves again that direct response marketing is a specialist arena, with special skills. This is perhaps why traditional creative agencies often struggle to get their small or home business clients good mailer response rates – Good marketing is much more than just an advertising pitch and fancy graphics. It’s not a branding exercise. We just want people to do something – To respond to an offer.

References: www.marketingbestpractices.com and www.docnielsenstuff.com

The cost to handle and re-mail undelivered mail has a hard cost of over $2 per item, towering over the original 60-90c it cost to print, process and mail the item! Overall, for most companies this adds around 10-15% to their annual mailing costs.

For major retailers with large customer bases, it can really add up. On a recent trip to the main Auckland post sorting centre I noted a huge bin of 25,000 returns from just one retailers expensive glossy catalogue! Tens of thousands of dollars wasted in print, mail house processing, magazine handling, postage and subsequent disposal! One would hope they had a strategy to solve this problem, although we somehow doubt it.

For companies sending out bills, the costs of non-delivered mail and then chasing errand clients is also great, costing businesses tens of thousands annually.

Obviously it’s not just a question of getting a clean database with the right postcodes, SOA processes etc. It’s also ensuring you have a means to take care of customer details, keeping track of them when they move address. 

NZ Post tell us up to 20% of the population moves each year and 5-10% of many businesses mailings are ‘lost’ during this process, never finding their intended recipient. It seems most of us will update our address with key suppliers like Telephone, Electricity, Banking etc, but few others. It’s up to those suppliers to do the hard work, make contact and update things.

These days with the various CRM packages and their integrated internet toolsets, there are few excuses not to keep our address databases clean, accurate and up to date. Ourselves as well as NZ Post have several innovative, low cost services that help a lot too.

It can start with us adding a simple barcode to each and every mail piece, then having any returns quickly scanned, auto-updating the original database. What once took hours, could be done in minutes…

Call us for details.

They provide us some real-world numbers of how cost-effective new PURL marketing can be compared with traditional methods of sales lead generation.

In a large campaign over many months, they expertly compared the effectiveness of traditional print advertising effort against a cross-media PURL Marketing system.

Results summary:

• Traditional Print Advertising – Total responses = 37.
  Cost per lead: $2,520.95
• PURL marketing – Leads = 1399 (26% av. response rate).
  Average cost per lead $128.08

These figures leave most marketers speechless. And for the client, it provided a healthy 1,700% revenue increase.

We’ve discovered here how a combined cross-media campaign using personalised print, email and purl website landing page, together with it’s expert tracking and salesperson follow-up, is more effective (200 times more in this case), than the traditional way of sales and marketing.

Source article by Heidi Tolliver Nigro

I’ve pointed out previously that while you might spend days, even weeks, crafting a direct mail message, recipients will spend just seconds deciding whether it’s worth their attention.

Here’s a video from Pitney Bowes illustrating this simple idea.

Let me first say that I disagree with the comment that a plain envelope is “boring.” The fact is, a plain envelope, especially one that looks personal, is a great way to get people to actually open the envelope and look at what’s inside.

Most of the other comments are worthy of consideration. For example, you have to get the recipient name and address right. Nothing will kill a mailer faster than addressing it to the wrong person. You must clean your list before you mail. And please remember to make sure you’re sending just one mailer to a home address unless you intend otherwise. I’ve been seeing a lot of waste recently with the same mailing arriving for various spellings of my name and my wife’s name.

Above is an excerpt from the DirectCreative Blog

Note this particular vendor video also show us how much more advanced mailers are in the US market. More innovative personalisation plus a trans-promotional mailer (the credit card bill), that we don’t see down here.

Note that most of the items shown in this video would not comply with the local NZ Post layout guidelines, allowing you to obtain the discounted postal rate. Call  for details or if you want to try these more innovative ‘high response’ techniques in your next direct marketing campaign or billing mailout.

Kevin Trye, ph 0226301625