The Power of Personalization

"Personalization is not a trend. It is a marketing tsunami, here to stay,…" Forbes magazine 2015

People are fed up being constantly bombarded by useless, impersonal mass-marketing messages. They struggle to keep their individuality wanting only a smidgen of acknowledgement, appreciation and respect. That's what makes personalization so powerful…it recognizes their individuality.

The following postcard includes 10 simple personalization elements using the sport shop's customer database. Can you identify them?

 

Click to enlarge

#1 & #2 – The recipient's name is used in the text on the front and back. While this is very simple element to use is so commonplace in 2015, it can be a turn-off if used without further personalization.

#3 & #4 – The sport shop's database indicates the recipient, Michelle, previously purchased women's golf equipment and clothing. The name "Michelle" indicates the recipient is female with a 99% degree of certainty. This information suggests the use an image of a female golfer to make an instant visual "connection" with Michelle.

#5 & #6 – Similarly, the message focuses on women's golf clothing with a picture of such clothing on the front and back.

#7 & #8 – The "unadvertised" message strongly implies the store recognizes Michelle as a previous (and valued) customer. The "online" code acknowledges that Michelle buys online as well as in the store.

#9 – The return address shows the location and phone number for the retail store closest to Michelle's mailing address rather than a corporate address.

#10 – This is a message personalized for Michelle. Therefore, the terribly impersonal slight, "Or Current Occupant", makes no sense and has been eliminated from the address.

Michelle could hardly miss the fact that the sports shop knows who she is and is working to offer her things she wants. You shouldn't miss the techniques used to track response to the postcard. If you don't see it, give us a call.

Make Your Print Customers Green

You do your part to be an environmentally friendly printer with your inks, toners, paper, recycling, production techniques, etc. and you'd like your customers to know about your efforts. Your print customers may also want recognition for the many environmentally friendly efforts they undertake. Now, you can join with your customers in taking positive steps to help the environment and show how you all work consciously to reduce the stress on our planet and its resources.

It's a commonsense and free concept called Greener Printing. There are no rules, no tests, no memberships and no fees. You simply work with your customer to communicate smarter - more efficiently and effectively. Shaving just a few pounds of weight from a mailing helps to save resources and minimizes waste. Being more selective with messages and recipients helps minimize non-productive communications…and often saves money.

There's nothing radical or complicated about Greener Printing…just engage with your print customers to do what makes sense. You might also include electronic media as part of the discussion since emails and social media have an impact on the environment that is surprisingly high. 

Promote Greener Printing by using the logo for your business and by using the logo on your customers' materials to show their commitment to environmentally friendly communications. The point is to generate attention and discussion about the broad topic of smarter communications. 

Read more and get started with Greener Printing at www.greenerprinting.org

Data Management Delivers Huge Cost Savings

Reduce your customer’s job cost by $10,000 and you’re certain to get some kudos. If $10,000 cuts the job cost in half, you’re likely to have that customer’s business for a long, long time. It’s unlikely, however, that you’re going to achieve such huge savings without doing something differently such as using the customer’s data more efficiently and effectively. We’ve helped lots of print shops deliver dramatic savings to customers (and higher profits for themselves). You’ll see in the following example how simple and straightforward it is.

Say you have a hypothetical customer who manages 100 offices (stores, outlets, salespeople or whatever). Your hypothetical customer wants to announce a special offer (sale, discount, opportunity or whatever) to the top 100 customers for each the 100 offices. The offer is exactly the same for all customers and is to be made via direct mail postcards with each local offices’ return address on the postcards.

There are two basic ways to accomplish this

1)  Your hypothetical customer sends text and artwork so each office can have postcards printed and mailed to its’ top 100 customers (literally, 100 static postcard mailing jobs), or

2)  You use some data management and a little VDP to do the entire mailing as a single job.

A simple “back of the cocktail napkin” estimate suggests that option 1) would have a total cost to your hypothetical customer of approximately $20,000 or $200 for each of the 100 offices. We estimate the $200 this way. Postage for the one hundred 6” x 9”postcards is almost $50. Each office likely spends at least $50 (one hour or more) in time to manage the job and get material, artwork and its mailing list to the local print shop. The local print shop would have to set up the artwork and print file (at least adding the return address), printing, cutting, addressing, putting postage on and mailing the 100 postcards. We guesstimate the print shop would charge at least $1 per postcard or $100. The price tag for your hypothetical customer ends up at $20,000 ($50 postage + $50 office time + $100 print & mail cost times 100 offices).

Alternatively, you might do the same (or better) job for $10,000 or less. Here’s how…

Your hypothetical customer gives you the 100 mailing lists. You combine them into a single, clean and formatted list of 10,000 addresses pre-sorted for a Standard mailing. You set up your artwork and do a simple VDP merge that applies the various return and mailing addresses. Print, cut, sort and mail the 10,000 postcards. We estimate that costs: 

$2,800 in postage (saving $2,000 for presorted Standard vs First Class)
$1,500 ($15 worth of time per office) to have the 100 mailing lists emailed to your hypothetical customer, and
$700* for data management work (merging, cleansing formatting & presorting).

That leaves $5,000 of our $10,000 estimated cost for digital printing, cutting, sorting and mailing the 10,000 postcards. Besides a substantial cost reduction, your hypothetical customer will also know that all the postcards were mailed (or which didn’t) and on what date. There won’t be any need to check up on 100 different offices for status updates. 

This not-so-hypothetical example demonstrates the job cost savings potential of combining data or mailing lists. There’s no magic or mystery. It’s simply taking advantage of economies of scale while also avoiding multiple “per job” or minimum costs. While you'll probably never be faced with a hundred mailing lists, even combining a half dozen lists can yield cost savings of 40 to 50% on some jobs.

Keep your eyes (and mind) open.  Opportunities for significant cost savings with data or mail list combining are actually fairly common but too often overlooked. Of course, if you need help with data management, VDP print files or optimizing a data-combination job, just give us a call.

* If this seems like a lot, consider how many combinations and permutations of formatting, arrangement, font, case, file type, etc. you can get when 100 people independently prepare their own mailing lists. While not technically challenging, it requires time and care to conform that many lists.

Print Shop Survival Tips

Here's a summary of a piece we created based on our interaction with many struggling print shops. See all 10 tips...
 

Small and Quick Print Shop Survival Tips

Live in the digital age – There’s no future living in the past. The printing process, market, customers and competition...

Know the competition – Digital technology enables your competition. Electronic media competes...

Be careful about commodities – Products are commodities when only price and delivery drive the buying decision. Competing for low-price...

Forget the “magic bullet” – There’s no software, hardware, gadget or gizmo that will miraculously improve your business. If there were a magic bullet...

Use small & quick to your advantage – Large competitors are limited to offering cookie-cutter products and solutions. Leverage your knowledge...

Head for your blue ocean – A thousand print shops go out of business each year because they were swimming in a red ocean. Understand why...

Break the rules for products & services – You’re in the communications solutions business: printing is just one of your tools. Skip convention...

Embrace data (information) – Data is crucial for your customers: communicating, analyzing audiences, spotting trends, etc. Simply talking...

Market your print shop – Customers can't buy anything from you if they don't know you exist. Market your print shop to make it easy for potential...

Make selling fun – Selling commodity print work is painful. Selling communication solutions like a consultant, however, can be fun. Learn...

We value your feedback. What would you add, delete, change?

Let us know what you think...

Talk Data to Me

Don’t get this confused with the 1980 adult comedy, “Talk Dirty to Me”. 

You should consider talking “data” to your customers. The industry experts have finally started to address an issue we’ve identified for years…data and communications are inseparable.

Your customers can’t communicate with or keep track of their customers, donors, supporters, etc. without data. Customer data can be simple such as mailing, email and contact lists or more sophisticated such as CRMs, donor software or custom datasets.

Moreover, data tends to be dynamic. Contacts come and go. People make purchases, donations, inquiries, etc. At some point, all data needs to be cleansed, merged, de-duped, sorted, formatted, appended, enhanced or some or all of these.

Where do your customers go when they need help with their data? Many don’t go anywhere. They muddle along with poor data…with inefficient data…with some data they can’t use. You have customers wanting help with their data or ideas to use their data more effectively. Why don’t you help them?

Learn some basic data-related terminology and you’re ready to start talking about data with your customers. What type of data (e.g. mailing lists, CRMs, etc.) are they using? How do they expand and maintain their data? Who does that? How do they do it? Do they have any problems with their data? Are there things they want do but can’t? You get the idea.

What makes this so simple is that you let experts do the actual data work for you. Send the data and the customers’ requirements to the experts who use their expertise and software and send the improved data back to you. Have any questions about data, they have the answers. What’s more, there’s no software to buy or learn.

You’ll be surprised by some of the reactions you get when you starting talking about data with your customers. Some of your customers will have been waiting a long time to have that discussion. They’ll start by telling you all of the problems they have and what they want to do (or can’t do) with their data. In reality, what they are doing is explaining all of the opportunities they have for you. Don’t worry. You don’t have to answer any questions on the spot and you always have your experts backing you up.

Being a data solutions provider (DSP) immediately sets you apart from the competition. Customers will never again look at you as simply a print vendor. Data is integral to both print and electronic communications – broadening your business opportunities. Few, if any, of your competitors will offer data solutions because the vast majority of them can’t. 

When you’re ready to start talking data, give us a call…we’re your data experts.

www.printshopmarketing.com

www.ez-vdp.com

Talking Data

Stop Stupid Marketing

Stupid Marketing: The process of trying to attract business while accomplishing just the opposite.

You'd be amazed how many print shop owners are quite good at stupid marketing. They aren't actually stupid but they aren't professional marketers, either. Stupid marketing mistakes are often obvious and can be disastrous.

One classic example of stupid marketing is: 

A print shop owner looking to expand his business finishes some lessons and decides to identify himself as a marketing services provider. As a good marketer, he knows he must let all of his customers know about his new services. He designs a very clever direct mail postcard campaign and adds some personalization to impress his audience. 

The campaign is hugely successful as evidenced by the print shop’s website experiencing a 45% increase in traffic immediately after the postcards are delivered. However, no phone calls, emails or any other communications are forthcoming. In fact, business overall seems to turn down rather than up! 

What’s the problem? Stupid marketing, of course!

As happens too often, the print shop owner failed to stand back and look at the image he was projecting to the marketplace. What’s that?

The owner did a great job announcing his new services and pushing his customers to his website…but, his old, ugly website delivered a totally different message to his customers:

• He does/did a lousy job of marketing himself
• He doesn’t keep his own marketing up-to-date
• He’s not particularly good with details
• He doesn’t have much sensitivity to image or brand
• If he’s this sloppy in his marketing, what else suffers?

Ouch! If you think the “stupid marketing” label is too harsh, consider this: the printer spent time and money to deliver a very negative message about his capability, image and brand to a large portion of his customer base. More to the point...he paid to drive away his existing customers! What do you call that?

We make this point intentionally edgy because we continue to see print shop owners doing this. But, now the good news!

We also see many other businesses doing exactly the same thing.

If your print shop does website design, you may have just learned a new trick for identifying and selling website opportunities.