If you have not yet used personalized URLs to boost response rates and survey your customers, what is stopping you? Is it because you don’t have a database to deploy the campaign? If so, you might have a misconception about the way personalized URLs work.

While there are some campaigns that use detailed customer and prospect databases to create very sophisticated, highly personalized mini-sites, these are the exception. Most personalized URL campaigns are used for lead generation and can start with a simple mailing list, whether in-house or rented. The purpose is to use those initial contacts to develop a more sophisticated database for later.

Personalized URL campaigns really shine as a data-gathering technique. Success is all about how you use that all-important survey page. You might survey respondents about pain points in their business, their preferences in electronic gadgets, or their political opinions. The goal is to gather whatever information will best suit your larger campaign goals.

One marketer, for example, experienced a 74% sales conversion rate following its personalized URL campaign because it used the personalized URLs to survey its prospects on their pain points before making personal contact. This put its salespeople in a position to suggest the appropriate programs right away—during the initial meeting—making those contacts highly effective.

So don’t allow lack of databases to be a barrier to implementing personalized URL applications. Instead, look at these campaigns as tools that allow you to gather information to increase the effectiveness of your sales follow-ups or to improve your targeting the next time around.

Looking for proof that personalization works? Consider the case of one historical museum that used personalization to create a lift in donations of 30%

For the past decade, the museum had been using direct mail as its primary way to solicit donations. After years of success, however, effectiveness was starting to wane. The museum wondered if personalizing the message to each recipient would breathe new life into its efforts.

To find out, the museum split its mailing in half. To the first half, it sent a traditional static newsletter. To the second half, it sent a personalized newsletter. Personalization included the person’s name, the state in which they lived, the number of charter members in that state, and prefilled the response forms to make sending in a donation easier. The results?

• Among those actively contributing, response rates increased 30%.
• Among less active but still donating members, response rates increased 25%.
• Among both active and less active members, the value of the donations increased.

Why did this campaign work?

In this case, personalization taps into the recipient’s sense of responsibility to the organization. “They know me — they are relying on me,” not just as an anonymous donor, but as someone the museum relies on by name. When you call someone by name, there is a responsibility that comes with that, especially in the world of fundraising.
Including the number of charter members in the recipient’s state also taps into the sense of collective responsibility. “Look how many other people are deeply supporting this cause. I should be more committed, as well.”

Finally, the prefilled form removed one of the barriers to responding to any campaign—the need to fill out a form, address an envelope, and add a stamp. If all the recipient has to do is drop a check in the envelope and put it in the mailbox, that alone can elevate response.

Whether you are a nonprofit organization or not, the lessons are clear. Call your customers by name, tap into collective responsibility (or collective participation in some kind of benefit), and make it easy to respond. Then watch your response rates soar.

Have you joined the ranks of marketers benefitting from personalized URLs? If not, why not?  Personalized URLs are a highly effective way to increase response rates and gather more information about your customers.

Personalized URL campaigns use the ability of digital presses to create personalized URLs that send recipients to their own, fully personalized pages (www.bobsbuildings.com/john_smith.htm). There, recipients generally navigate a customized “mini-site” that includes a personalized landing page, a survey page, an information page, and a thank-you page. Once the user responds, the data is appended back into your database for use in future targeting.

Although this sounds complicated, it isn’t. These applications can be template-driven, using something as simple as a mailing list. Setup time can be a matter of hours—or less. The magic is in the software.

While personalized URLs do require databases, they can be successful with as little as a mailing list. Campaigns often start with some kind of basic demographic or other segmentation, and once people respond, the software gathers the data and appends it back automatically so you can use it for more detailed targeting and personalization later. Thus, personalized URLs don’t require detailed marketing databases. They become gateways to creating them.

Indeed, research shows that the more marketers learn from their personalized URL surveys, the more effective their campaigns become. In an analysis of its customers’ multi-channel marketing campaigns, for example, one personalized URL software supplier found that in 2009, marketers using its system achieved a 5.1% visit rate and 3.8% response rate on average. But in 2010, just one year later, they were achieving visit rates of 6.5% and response rates of 4.5%.

Personalized URLs are a terrific tool for generating responses and learning about your customers . . . and the more you use them (and learn from them), the more effective they become.

The economy is bouncing back, but marketing budgets are still tight. Are you tempted to slash your print marketing budget to save a few dollars? If so, you are likely to be counterproductive.

Difficult economic times are about survival. The more visible your company is, the more confident your customers and prospects will be that you are the company to trust. When you stop marketing, you create uncertainty about the strength of your business. You also open the door for your best customers to become your competitor’s best prospects.

When printing and mailing in any economic environment, here are three tips that will help you get the most out of your marketing dollars:

1. Craft your message from a position of strength. When times are tough, people don’t stop buying. They just become more selective. Establish yourself as a strategic business partner who offers the most relevant products at the greatest value based on quality and performance. Add credibility to your message with customer testimonials and other sources of validation, such as certifications and awards.

2. Exploit the weaknesses of the competition. Your best marketing campaign is worthless if the competitor down the street is closing the sale. Design print materials to persuade prospects not only to buy the product or service you’re offering, but to buy it from you. Determine what your competitors are doing (or not doing) that can help you position your company, product, or offer more favorably.

3. Give prospects a reason to buy now. No matter how magical your marketing message is, fewer people tend to respond when budgets are tight. Spur prospects to action with a limited time offer, such as a discount or complimentary service. Fear is a part of the buying decision. Guarantees are an effective way to ease buyer doubt.

Companies with aggressive marketing, along with superior products and value, prevail in times of both prosperity and recession, while those with timid marketing, inferior products, and exaggerated marketing claims fail. Whether it’s branding, prospecting, or customer retention, invest in smart marketing and enjoy a vastly stronger market presence as the economy bounces back.

Guess what? No one wants to buy your product or service. What they really want is an answer to one of their needs, wants, desires and fears.

Here’s how you can put this to work for you: You can strengthen your market position by learning how these psychological factors, along with the psychological impact of your graphics and marketing message, affect your target audience. Change your strategy from marketing features and benefits to the promise that you can satisfy at least one of these psychological motivations and you will create a winning marketing strategy.

Say you are a manufacturer of cologne, and 90% of customers say that they purchased your product because it smells good. So you pour marketing dollars into promoting the best-smelling scent on the planet, but pallets sit unsold in your warehouse. Why? Because we often make purchases for emotional reasons, such as acceptance and association, then justify them with a rational explanation. The challenge for marketers is unearthing those secret reasons for making a purchase.

In the example above, the hidden impetus is that cologne makes the wearer feel more attractive. Change your marketing pitch from how good your cologne smells to how it fulfills the purchaser’s desire to be alluring and — voila! — the product flies off the shelves.

The trick is to thread your marketing promise into every element, including product image, advertising and promotion strategy, product packaging and display, and even your pricing. Use the design and copy to quickly lead the reader to how the product can satisfy one of their needs, wants, desires, or fears. Graphics will have better recall than words, so choose images that are harmonious with your copy.

You can create print marketing that is well-designed and well-written, but that still fails miserably if it’s not credible. Pair a good product or service with a focused marketing strategy based on an understanding of what truly motivates your customers, and you will dominate your market.

Most successful printing projects don’t happen by accident. They start with a good plan. By developing a plan in advance, you can save money, time, and energy throughout the process.

Good project planning starts with some very simple steps.

1. Share your design with us.

By bringing us into the process during the design stages, we can tell you whether certain ideas will have an impact on the time or cost of the piece. For example, you might not realize that some binding options can take extra time or that a certain trim size might incur extra costs.

2. Consider your suppliers’ schedules.

Are you bringing outside suppliers into the process? If so, how do their schedules impact yours? If you are using a freelance illustrator, for example, what is this person’s availability? If changes need to be made later on, will this person be able to respond in a timely fashion on a short turnaround? If you’re placing a label on a specialty bottle, will the bottle company have sufficient supply during your timeframe?

3. Plan backwards from the delivery date.

Keep us informed about your progress. We juggle many jobs at any given time. If you don’t meet your date to get the files to us, your delay can have a ripple effect. We might place another job on the press in front of yours, and have to push your project back to the next available opening. The larger the job, often the more difficult it is to reschedule.

4. Add a “fudge factor.”

Always add in buffer to accommodate slippage in the schedule. The larger the project, the more buffer you will need.

5. Communicate!

Keep people in the loop, and let them when you need the job in your hands. When everyone is communicating effectively and working toward the same goal, you are more likely to be rewarded with a project that comes in on time and on budget.

When planning a job, it’s a lot easier to think about the design and paper than the ink. But understanding the ins and outs of ink is critical to successful design, too.

Inks are formulated differently for different purposes and equipment. When manufacturers make ink, they deal with four basic elements: pigments (the coloring), transfer agents (the solvents and resins that cause the ink to spread), varnishes (the additives that control glossiness), and drying additives. Different combinations of these elements determine the suitability of the ink for a particular project.

Here are four types of ink beyond the traditional four-color process inks that you might not be familiar with:

1. “Scuff-resistant” inks. These inks were specially formulated for the packaging industry so items printed with these inks could withstand more abuse during transit.

2. Metallic inks. These inks get their shine from real metals added to the ink base. Metallic inks look great, but they are laid down more thickly than standard four-color process inks, so they take longer to dry. The thick ink coverage also makes metallics more prone to scratching or scuffs.

3. Fluorescent inks. These inks offer brilliant fluorescent effects. To achieve this look, they are printed on white paper. Like metallic inks, fluorescent inks are more opaque than four-color process inks, which can cause trapping issues. They also tend to fade in brilliance over time.

4. Soy inks. Traditional offset inks emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) when run through the dryers on the press. Soy inks are not made from petroleum, so they have lower VOC emissions. They do have limitations, so be sure to talk to us about the pros and cons of using them.

Even though the basic principles of lithography are simple, inks involve a lot of complex chemistry. If you have a project with special requirements, please ask about your ink options before you go to print.

Quick! Name a soft drink. Chances are you thought of Coke or Pepsi. These beverage giants spend millions in advertising to stay top of mind (TOMA). How about you? If someone asked your customers to name a company in your product category, would your company come to mind?

Here are five ways to stay “TOMA” with your customers:

1. Find your unique selling proposition. What makes your company special? Price, product availability, location, quality, or speed? Articulate it clearly, consistently, and succinctly in all of your marketing communications. Keep saying it!

 2. Be consistent in design. Everything from your Web site to your customer literature to your stationery should have a similar look and feel. Use templates if necessary.

 3. Proactively send messages into the market. A one-time advertising blitz can get your message out quickly, but you build credibility and stay top of mind with regular, timely marketing communications.

4. Use multiple touch points. Direct mail is highly effective in reinforcing a personal bond between your company and your customer. Multiple media reinforce that message by touching prospects at different times and in different ways. Send a customized letter giving your best prospects the inside track on a new product. Follow up with email. Send a postcard or brochure when the product is available. Send a note of thanks when the client makes a purchase.

 5. Timing is everything. Strategically plan repeated communications so customers perceive you as a provider of useful information rather than an intrusive pest. This requires both organization and dedication.

Never before have consumers had so many choices. Staying top of mind will lift you out of a noisy marketplace, increasing customer retention and response rates.

When you look through paper samples, one of the first things you probably notice is whether the sample is coated or uncoated. Coated papers feel smooth to the touch because they have a coating of clay and other substances. This coating causes the paper to reflect light more and absorb ink less than uncoated papers.

Many different types of coated papers exist. To make them, the paper mill starts with an uncoated piece of paper and applies different types of coatings to give the paper different qualities. We call the uncoated stock the base sheet. We refer to the thinnest type of coating as a film or wash coat, which acts as a sealer to prevent ink absorption. The next step is a matte coating. A matte coat has more clay than a wash coat and is good for projects with a lot of text. However, if your project involves large areas of heavy, dark ink coverage, matte coat papers can sometimes appear somewhat mottled.

The next step is a dull, suede or velvet coat. Like matte coatings, dull coatings are good for text readability because they are not as reflective as a gloss coat. Glossy coatings actually have the same amount of clay as a dull coat, but the mill smoothes and polishes the sheets using a process called calendaring. They run the paper between rollers, which compress and smooth the paper. Glossy coatings are great for color photographs, but the same shiny qualities that make photos look great can make text harder to read because of the glare.

Gloss coated papers can be somewhat less white than dull coated papers because the heat required to polish the paper also can add a slightly brownish cast. Coated papers often include shades of white named with terms, such as balanced, warm and cold to indicate the hue. Cream and other off-white tones are available, but because we so often use coated stock for showing off vibrant four-color printing, the paper itself is rarely brightly colored.

As you can see, there are many different kinds of coated paper stocks, and each is suited to different tasks. It can be overwhelming to tackle these choices alone. Contact us early in the planning stage of your next printing project, and we’ll help you choose the best paper and coating for your needs.

In order to produce a successful 1:1 printing campaign, all you need is a great database, right? Not quite. Producing a successful 1:1 print campaign starts with having a great database, but once you have the data, you have to figure out what to do with it. Often, that means data mining.

Data mining. The very phrase strikes fear into the hearts of marketers, but in reality, it is simply the process of finding patterns in large data sets. That doesn’t have to be a daunting proposition. In fact, you can do simple data mining in Excel.

There are three steps to data mining:

• Know what data is available.
• Ask questions about that data.
• Look for useful relationships.

This is something you can do from your own desktop. The first step is simply to understand what’s in your database. The next step is to start asking questions of that data.

If you are a retailer, for example, you might ask, “Which customers purchased hardwood flooring last month?” Then you might ask, “What else did these same customers purchase?” You might find that these same customers also purchased area rugs and floor conditioning products. Now you can ask even more questions. When do they typically make purchases? Is there a pattern by time of month?

Over time, you will start seeing relationships that will be highly useful in your 1:1 marketing. That’s data mining! And it’s well within the grasp of any sized marketer. So get curious!