Use IMB To Time Your Mailings
Category: Execution
Thursday, 28 February 2013 16:27
As you may know, the United States Postal Service now requires mailers to use the Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) if they want to receive automation discounts. But you may not know that the IMb offers significant marketing benefits, too.
For example, if you are producing multi-channel, multi-touch campaigns combining email and direct mail, will you get better results by sending the email as a primer — before the direct mail package arrives — or as a follow-up after the package hits? You can use the IMb to find out.
One marketer did just this. The IMb tracks the exact date that a mail piece arrives at the destination post office. So working with its agency, the marketer set up a test to trigger emails based on the expected and actual in-home arrival dates of its packages. For emails sent before the packages arrived, it needed to know the date the packages were expected to arrive. For emails sent after the packages’ arrival, it needed to know the date the packages were actually delivered.
The team implemented the test by applying different identifiers to individual records, projected in-home arrival dates, and tracking the actual arrivals at specific addresses. It also set up an automated daily feed of tracked data, with each item classified by its particular timing. This allowed both the agency and the client to see which time interval (email before the package hit or emails arriving afterwards) worked the best.
The program worked flawlessly and provided extremely valuable information on how to proceed. In fact, based on what it learned, the agency changed its best practices for multi-channel, multi-touch campaigns.
If you conducted a test like that, what do you think you might learn?
How Personal Is Too Personal?
Category: Execution
Wednesday, 30 January 2013 16:05
How Personal Is Too Personal?
Personalized marketing communications have clear benefits both to the consumer and the marketer, but a new study from JWT Intelligence finds that the idea of personalized marketing can make people feel uncomfortable. At the same time, if there is a tangible benefit, such as saving money, they’re willing to get over it!
In the study, 65% of consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom said that knowing companies can predict what they’ll want or need and create customized offers just for them makes them feel as if Big Brother is watching. Nearly an equal percentage (64%) said it made them feel anxious. More than half (51%) said it made them feel “violated.”
Does this mean you shouldn’t personalize your marketing? Not at all!
- 64% said it was okay with them if they save money.
- 62% said it was okay as long as they get relevant offers.
- 56% said it was okay with them as long as it makes shopping easier.
So if you’re going to personalize your communications, make the benefits clear right out of the gate. Let the recipient know right upfront they are getting something in return — and that it is something of great value to them.
http://www.brand-e.biz/consumers-think-big-data-can-be-like-big-brother_25197.html
5 Steps to Improve Your Direct Mail
Category: Execution
Tuesday, 21 August 2012 20:29
5 Steps to Improving the Effectiveness of Your Direct Mail
Want to improve the effectiveness of your direct mail pieces? Here are five steps that will help you knock it out of the park.
1. Punch up your headlines.
The headlines in your direct mail pieces are the first things people will read. How effective are they? Can you make them even better? One email service provider suggests studying the headlines of national newspapers to learn how to write short, punchy subject lines for email. This works for direct mail pieces, too.
2. Include a clear call to action.
What is the goal of the piece? Get people to buy a product? Sign up for a seminar? Contract for a service? Whatever it is, make that call to action clear. People need to know exactly what you want them to do and easily be able to find the phone numbers, the links, and other tools that enable them to act on the call.
3. Target, segment, personalize.
People respond to marketing messages that are relevant to their interests and needs. You can make this happen by first segmenting your mailing to different demographic groups and then personalizing to their individual preferences and stated needs based on what you know about them in your database.
4. Create a sense of urgency.
Urgency tends to create action. Give a specific date by which you want recipients to respond. But even a non-time-specific “Act now!” can be effective, too. Consumers may recognize these as marketing techniques, but those techniques still work.
5. Test, test, test!
How do you know what really works best for your audience? Experiment. Create multiple variations within the same mailing. Monitor the results and test over time. Test different variable fields. Different incentives. Different ways to create urgency. The more you understand the dynamics of your customer base, the more effective your campaigns will be.
Implementing these best practices will help you improve the effectiveness of your campaigns both now and over time. Think you don’t have time to make it happen? Think again. All you have to lose is better results.
Are you still using POSTNET barcodes?
Category: Execution
Tuesday, 07 August 2012 08:46
Are you still using POSTNET barcodes?
Starting in January 2013, the U.S. Postal Service will no longer accept POSTNET barcodes for automation discounts. To receive the discounts, you must use the Intelligent Mail barcode (IMB). If you’ve been looking for a reason to starting using the more fully featured IMB, now you’ve got one.
Starting in January, if you try to use POSTNET, your mail will get stopped at the counter and you will be charged the difference between automated and non-automated pricing before your mail can go any further. If you are working with a middleman who is dropping the mail at a Bulk Mail Center (BMC) or other location, you could end up with delays as those all along the postal chain work to resolve the issue.
If you use the Full-Service Intelligent Mail barcode, you gain advantages even beyond postal discounts. Full-Service offers free Start-the-Clock (mail tracking), deeper discounts than Basic IMb, and free address quality updates. Starting in January 2014, Basic will be discontinued and only Full-Service IMBs will be accepted by the U.S. Postal Service.
To avoid mail delays and take advantage of the benefits offered by IMBs, you can start implementing them now. If you need some extra incentive, here are five more reasons:
1. Being able to track your mail enables you to monitor campaigns with critical in-home delivery dates. If the mail gets stalled, you’ll know it and be able to nudge it along.
2. If you know when your mail hits the local post offices, you can time phone calls, emails, texts, or other follow-ups to the campaign to boost response.
3. Because you know when the mail will hit, you can plan and staff your fulfillment operations more efficiently.
4. Because Full-Service IMbs allow you to track every individual mail piece, you know what payments are coming in. This helps with cash flow.
5. For companies like insurance companies, knowing which payments are on the way means that you can avoid unnecessary policy cancelations.
Are you ready to explore the transition to Intelligent Mail barcodes? Let us walk through the options with you.
Trigger-Based Marketing on the Rise
Category: Execution
Tuesday, 17 July 2012 15:15
Trigger-Based Marketing on the Rise
Are you using trigger-based marketing to communicate with your clients? If not, why not?
According to a survey conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, 59% of senior marketers expect their use of marketing automation to rise. Thirty-nine percent expect it to stay the same. Only 2% expect it to decrease.
One of the areas marketers are ramping up automation is the use of trigger-based marketing. This means marketers are sending messages (print, email, or other media) as an immediate and automatic response to some external event.
More than half (53%) of the marketers surveyed are currently doing trigger-based marketing, and 66% plan to do so in the next 12 months.
Triggers might include customer’s transaction history, responses to online surveys, behavioral or demographic data, social media activity or comments, geo-location activity and check-ins, and more.
In trigger-based marketing, as soon as one of the triggers is “tripped” (someone’s birthday is coming up, an invoice is due, an auto lease is set to expire), the marketing response is launched. Out goes the email, the postcard, or the text message. Because of the clear, immediate relevance to the customer, this technique is highly effective.
Since trigger-based messages are sent out automatically, this is marketing you don’t have to think about. Once the program is set up, like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps going—the right message at the right time. It’s no wonder that trigger-based programs are highly coveted by marketers.
If you aren’t using trigger-based marketing to communicate with your clients, it’s something to think about.
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