"Free Puppy with Every Purchase." Great offer or a bad case of brand deconstruction?

I have to start with a quick story… I use to work for a corporation with over 10,000 locations world wide. Some of the locations were corporate owned, some were owned by franchisees. My role was in corporate marketing and my responsibilities included franchise marketing. The member of our creative services team who was responsible for reviewing and approving the franchises’ self-created marketing materials sat adjacent to my office.

I still giggle every time I think about the “creative” language she utilized many times a day to describe what she received to review: distorted logos, misspellings, horrendous color combinations, and my all-time favorite offer: “Free puppy with every purchase!”

Technology has advanced rapidly to make the management of marketing materials faster, easier and more controlled for companies with distributed locations, marketing staff and field sales. The solution that is central to improving the quality of branded communications comes in many shapes and sizes and has many names like: marketing asset management, communications portal, print on-demand, web-to-print, and digital asset management.

For organizations that are still concerned that a marketing communications portal will be destructive instead of constructive, let’s look at some of the biggest fears:

Big Fear 1: My brand and brand message will be distorted.

All good communications portals come with the power to give you the brand control you need, while making the user feel like they have great customization abilities.

Big Fear 2: There’s a lack of quality data and mailing lists at a local level.

This may be true, but you can help them obtain new lists. Even better, hook-up the data and list service you want them to use. You can even program in targeted tools that enforce best practices.

Big Fear 3: They (the field, location, and marketing managers) will spend too much.

If budget isn’t controlled by the franchisee, or location level budgets are not in place, expenses can be monitored and limited through your marketing portal. Spending limits may be set by order, user or location within the communications portal.

Big Fear 4: After investing in a communications portal, it is not utilized and doesn’t produce a positive ROI.

This is the opposite problem to number three above, and the problem most likely encountered when implementing localized marketing. This problem has to be addressed before you implement a communication portal. Conduct user testing with the proposed tool before buying. Make sure your users can easily understand how to navigate the system and know exactly what to do. Next, plan out an implementation and user adoption program to encourage interaction with the communications portal or asset management system. And although this is common sense, after you implement the communications portal, the old way of doing things has to be eliminated. Aberdeen Group recently released research on Print On-Demand that proves the positive impact it has on ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment.

Big Fear 5: They aren’t savvy enough to know what to do.

Even an easy-to-use system doesn’t make up for the lack of marketing expertise required to conduct local marketing initiatives. Or does it? If the system can be set up to support best practices and be specific enough that the localized marketer or franchisee knows exactly what to do, even lack of marketing know-how can be overcome.

Empowering Your Most Devoted Marketers: Your Local Representatives

Up to this point, this entire article has studied negative things that can happen when marketing is conducted at a local level. I have also worked for a franchise owner and seen thousands of franchisees and location managers in action. Who takes on the most responsibility for each location to be successful? It’s the local manager, sales person, franchise owner, and each and every employee associated with that location. Sorry corporate, it is not you.

The unfaltering commitment that these individuals possess to make their business a success is enormous. For companies to not take advantage of that from a marketing perspective is a detriment to the success of the company and franchise owner.

If you don’t give marketing control, you don’t get motivation for success by the very people who interact with the customer each and every day. Individual locations always feel their market situation is different, their competition is different, their employee base is different, and so they need to feel that they can control the marketing and sales approach to be different, even if it is not.

With the right tools, a communications portal being the main one, you can give your locations and franchisee all they need to conduct relevant, localized marketing, while keeping the control you need to build a consistent national or world-wide brand. So what’s holding you back?

I recently wrote a report on using Data-Driven Charts and Graphs that is filled with examples, and also contains guidance on  addressing common implementation challenges. This report is my attempt to help agencies and marketers plan how data-driven graphs and charts can be employed to make their direct marketing more relevant, more engaging and ultimately more effective.

You can download the report at www.mailprint.com/charts.  I’d be delighted to have your feedback.  Please feel free to email me directly at rhondab(at)mailprint(dot)com.

Over the last 12 years, Google has built their empire on a seemingly simple function: providing relevant information to their “customers” (searchers). Even with a 70% market share, Google continues to develop their search tool to increase the relevance and personalization of their searches to individual users.

Good news! You don’t need an 11-digit annual revenue to communicate with your prospects and customers with Google-like relevancy and personalization. Let’s look at three techniques Google is using to increase the satisfaction and loyalty of their users, and how direct marketers can do the same.

Three Personalization Tactics You Should Steal From Google

1) Target Geographically

Above: Google local search results.

Just like you know the physical addresses of your contacts, Google knows where you’re searching from (based on your IP address or account info), and loves serving you localized versions of search results. Sometimes, they even include a handy map to show you how to get to your favorite taco stand or variable data printing company.

Whether you’re locally-based, or a franchise with thousands of locations, geographically personalizing your communications can be helpful for recipients, and increase your response and sales.

Ways to implement geographic targeting and personalization in your marketing:

• Use imagery that matches the region or environment of your recipients. It never snows in Phoenix, so don’t send your customers there a holiday card featuring a snowman (they prefer the Christmas Cactus).
• Values and even language choices can vary by region, and even city-dwellers as compared to suburbanites. Depending on your product (is it “pop,” “soda” or “coke?”) or service, you may need to version your benefits messaging to match what’s important and familiar to your audiences.
• Need to increase foot traffic for a new location? Try mailing local homes or businesses an offer, and include a variable map with driving directions from their location. We’ve seen this done with great results.

2) Track Behaviors To Increase Relevancy

Above: Google search personalization screen.

Near the end of last year, Google rolled out “personalized search results,” which customizes the results searchers are served based on the search results they’ve clicked in the past and the sites they’ve visited. “Big Brother” fears aside, this optional feature does improve the relevancy of search results, ultimately improving the users’ experience and satisfaction.

Like Google, most organizations store large amounts of data on their customers, including purchase and usage history. By integrating with their customer database or CRM system, marketers can respond to customer behaviors with highly-relevant and perfectly-timed communications designed to up-sell, cross-sell, retain, or win-back customers.

Behavior tracking can also be used in lead generation and nurturing by responding to a lead’s actions, such as a website visit or resource download, with automated, multi-channel campaigns.

Examples of Behavior-Based Marketing Personalization:

• If you’ve shopped Amazon.com, you’ve most like received follow-up emails with similar or complementary products to those you’ve purchased or browsed. Now, with variable data printing, there’s no reason you can’t do this with direct mail and catalog marketing as well.
• If you deliver statements or notifications to your customers, it’s time to turn them into “transpromo” communications that highlight complimentary services.
• Set up automatic alerts to inform your sales or customer service team when a customer has missed a regular order, or automatically trigger a “We’ve missed you” email or mail piece, with an incentive to bring them back.

3) Serve Information In The Medium They Prefer

Above: Optional Google search channels.

For a while now, Google and their competitors have been improving their tools for searches for images, videos, blogs and other channels, knowing that different users prefer different mediums. With Google’s recent redesign, they’ve made these options even more prominent, helping users access the information they’re searching for, in whatever format they need.

Because there are a finite number of leads and customers out there, it’s important to make sure you’re getting through to as large a percentage of your target audience as possible. You can increase your chances of reaching contacts by serving your message in various mediums (email, mail, online, phone call, text, video, social, etc.). In a study by Epsilon, companies using multi-channel marketing achieved an average 11% sales lift.

Ideas for Implementing Multi-Channel Marketing:

• Create multi-channel drip campaigns that automatically nurture a lead or customer over time, using various mediums. The technology is already out there to do this.
• Use triggers to automatically detect multiple unopened email messages, and auto-deploy a mail piece to that lead or customer.
• Back up your traditional marketing pushes with complementary efforts on your social networks.
• 67% of online actions are driven by offline messages (iProspect Study); send a mail piece driving recipients to a customized landing page.

Ready to Beat Google to Their Next Big Thing?

There are rumors that Google is beginning to factor in which entries searchers click on to determine which entries they should serve more prominently, placing the items that proved most relevant to other users higher in search results.

This tactic has been in used by direct marketers for decades, since long before Google was even a twinkle in the eyes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin: it’s called testing.

Whether you’re ready to try geographic or behavior-based personalization, or are considering trying a new marketing channel, it’s important (and easier than you would think) to test audience, creative and offer variations. You’ll increase the ROI of your marketing, and provide your leads and prospects the relevance they’ve been searching for.

If you’re joining us from a mobile device, you can watch the YouTube version here. Oh, and if you’d prefer the thousand words instead of the visual, you can get the video transcript here.

Map out the buying process and help prospects and customers navigate their way to a buying decision.

Today’s decision makers have changed. They scrutinize buying options more carefully. Their expectations are higher across the board. They want to understand the opportunity costs of making a purchasing decision; or rather, the value of the alternatives that he or she is giving up to choose your company.

Undoubtedly, your prospects control the buying process.

To help decision makers navigate successfully through the buying decision process, imagine your team of sales and marketing professionals as city planners or heads of transportation. It is their task to build the onramps, highways and traffic lights that will keep your prospects moving to the destination: a buying decision.

As heads of transportation, your sales and marketing will need to define the key communication points needed along this educational and relationship-building process.

Multi-channel marketing campaigns are perfect for complimenting sales interactions with automatic mail and email communications. But be careful. Not every interaction with the buyer or customer is about closing a new deal; it’s about delivering relevant information at the right time to the right individual. If you add irrelevant messages or touches, congestion ensues and the buyer goes elsewhere to obtain the information they need.

Decision makers want more information. We’re not just talking about an extended list of features and benefits. We’re talking about empowerment through education, fact finding, and knowledge acquisition.

Companies are currently grappling for pole position as the trusted advisor, a role now paramount to success for not only new business, but for up-selling and cross-selling existing clients as well. The question for you is whether your company will be the source of this information, or will your prospects go elsewhere to satisfy their curiosity?

Did you know that 25% of the people who never open your emails will be among the top 10% of your customers? – Email Experience Council

In a recent BtoB Magazine Online post Karen Bannan says, “transactional messages can help you reach out to new or current customers to help build brand awareness and even create new sales.” Her article “Tips for Transactional Email” contains a multitude of reminders of how impactful email can be for building customer relationships.  It also highlights all the wonderful benefits of relevancy and timeliness when communicating with customers.

• But what if the customer’s email address isn’t accurate?
• What if, the client gives you an email address they never check?  (We all know that many people have a “junk” email account that they don’t check all that often.)
• What if, your email gets caught in a spam filter and the customer never receives it?

With new advances in email and printing automation technology, there are ways to make sure your transactional marketing (transpromo) stays at the top of its game by using a multi-channel approach.  Here are a couple of ideas to get you thinking:

• Based on the value of the customer, if the email hard bounces you send a direct mail piece to present the information and great offers they missed in the email.  You also provide an easy way to collect the correct email address, usually via a landing page or Personalized URL. This landing page is also a great place to ask their preference for all types of transpromo communications.

• You can define engagement rules to know when you should communicate via a different channel.  A couple of examples:
  • If the email isn’t opened within seven days, a mail piece is triggered.
  • If three transactional emails are not opened, a text message or direct mail piece is triggered.

It is important to remember that the goal of the utilizing alternate channels is not just to sell more, but to get the customer to engage with the channel that’s right for them.  Email Experience Council research states that 85% of the people on your email list will stop reading your emails without unsubscribing after the third message your company sends to them. How are you going to re-engage them?

Derek Harding, CEO of Innovyx, Omnicom Group’s interactive arm states, “If someone has just made a purchase, you absolutely must try and keep that dialogue going.”  The way I see it, that means utilizing every channel at your disposal to serve and engage your customer.

A special thanks for Karen Bannan for her thoughtful article on transactional email. You can read it here.

From research by Aberdeen Group: Users of Print On-Demand achieved a 42% higher customer retention rate than non-users.

Among their findings was a correlation between companies that use a Print On-Demand solution and a dramatic improvement in customer retention. In an economy where every customer counts, a 42% higher customer retention rate among Print On-Demand users is more than noteworthy. But what’s the correlation? How does POD impact on customer retention so significantly?

Three Reasons Print On-Demand Improves Customer Retention

1. More timely – With on-demand printing, written communications and printed materials get in the hands of prospects or customers more quickly, as the materials are produced and delivered immediately, instead of waiting weeks to be batched with other orders.
2. Improved relevancy – Printed materials can easily be customized to be relevant to the recipient using a Print On-Demand system. For example, cross-selling, new customer assimilation, and segmentation strategies can all be applied, one customer at a time.
3. It builds better relationships – By empowering true 1-to-1 communication, personal communications can be customized to come from their sales or customer service representative to the intended recipient.

Follow this link to download a free report including additional findings from Aberdeen: Print On-Demand: Driving Efficiency and Revenue Growth with Organizational Print Portals.

Additional Benefits of On-Demand Printing

Many times when a company moves to a Print On-Demand or web-to-print solution, another significant shift happens. They move from static off-set printing to digital printing. Several years ago many marketing professionals questioned the quality of digital print. Today, to the naked eye, it is practically impossible to tell the difference between commercial off-set printing and digital.

Using advanced digital printing and marketing automation technology, the delivery of printed materials becomes as easy as sending personalized, triggered email.  In fact, the use of both mail and email together becomes fast, efficient and very impactful.

Many companies have found it helpful to integrate their Marketing Asset Management solution with email and automated print deployment, making the creation and execution processes streamlined and efficient.  In fact, in addition to improved customer retention, many companies save hundreds of thousands of dollars by moving to an integrated POD system. (See case studies at www.mailprint.com)

Thanks to the Aberdeen Group for investing in the research that quantifies what was previously suspected: POD improves customer retention and bolsters ROMI by putting a serious dent in marketing execution costs.

The comparison below is based on Godin’s main points:

With tighter budgets and continued pressure to produce measurable results, the safer, predictable direct marketing process would seem a no-brainer. However, everyone from small business owners dabbling in marketing to seasoned advertising veterans are tempted to rely on their personal taste and gut instinct to determine what will appeal to and motivate the masses. This temptation is natural, but not justifiable, according to Godin:

“The key distinction [between direct marketing and mass marketing] is when you know it’s going to work. The mass marketer doesn’t know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning. The mass marketer is betting on thousands of tiny cues, little clues, and unrecorded (but vital) conversations. The direct marketer is measuring conversion rates from the first day.

“That’s the reason we often default to acting like mass marketers. We’re putting off the day of reckoning, betting on the miracle around the corner, spending our time and energy on the early steps without the downside of admitting failure to the boss.

“Of course, just because it’s our default doesn’t mean it’s right. Business to business marketing is almost always better if you treat it like direct marketing. Most websites that do conversion as well. Same with non-profit fundraising.”

So, as it turns out, the distinction between mass and direct marketing is less about the size of your audience, and more about the process you follow to determine the right messaging for them. Are you willing to devote the time needed to test your message, and do you have the humility and persistence needed to acknowledge a failed test and try again? If so, then you’re on your way to achieving more powerful, scalable marketing.

You can read Godin’s complete post here.

Jason Kort, Director of Marketing for Redemption Plus

I recently had the chance to talk with Jason Kort, Director of Marketing for Redemption Plus, a leading distributor of incentive and redemption merchandise.  You may know them as the inventor of the “World’s Largest Whoopie Cushion.” Redemption Plus is no doubt a very fun business focused on delivering all the wonderful toys, games and prizes used by family entertainment and educational franchises nationwide.

Jason recently led the implementation of print automation and variable data technology that is improving the catalog that is essential to their business.  Here’s a portion of that interview:

How did you recognize that you needed a different process for producing electronic and hard copy catalogs?

JK:  There were really three areas that were driving me crazy:

1. It was taking too much time to create and produce a catalog and the instant we printed one it was out of date.
2. It took 10-15 minutes for our sales reps to send our catalog to individual prospects.
3. It was too hard for our customers to determine what they wanted to buy from us.

What was the biggest challenge to implementing an automated printing and digital file delivery system?

JK:  Variable data and print automation were new to us, so figuring out exactly what we needed and what we wanted to do was the biggest challenge.

What advice would you give other marketers who are changing to an automated variable data catalog?

JK:  This is really like an IT project.  Make sure you thoroughly define what you need and scope it out like an IT project.

Could you summarize the biggest benefit your personalized, on-demand catalog system has brought to Redemption Plus?

JK:  I’d love to narrow it to one, but I can only get to three:

1. The time it takes my sales reps to order catalogs has went from 10 minutes to 30 seconds.
2. We never print a catalog that is out-of-date due to the real-time integration with our product database.
3. It’s easy for our customers to quickly access the types of items they want to order, which has lead to an easy increase in sales.

Easy and relevant are the words that come to mind when describing this new tool Redemption Plus has created. Kudos to Jason and his team! To read more about Redemption Plus and their dream-come-true print-on-demand catalog, read the case study.

So how are the variable images and information used to create a personalized catalog?

Here are some visuals of the new and improved Redemption Plus catalog.

Click on the thumbnail images to view larger, with variable information circled.

On the catalog cover, customer information and the date are personalized.

Inside the catalog, products are customized based on current items in the database. Pricing is specific to the end-users’ mark-up requirements.

Sales rep information and photograph is automatically included.

Marketing budgets have begun shifting as well. Of the participants in the 2009 PRWeek/MS&L Social Media Survey 31% reported shifting in marketing and communications budgets to add social media to their mix, with 48% of their social budgets being pulled from past advertising budgets, 41% from direct marketing, 29% from media buying, and 18% from PR.

Despite these budget shifts, marketing executives surveyed in the study still say they believe each of the more traditional direct marketing, advertising and PR channels have a greater impact on the success of their company or brand.

Source: 2009 PRWeek/MS&L Social Media Survey

So even though marketers believe that direct marketing and other traditional tactics are more effective, they’re willing to divert budget to social media. Is this a rational decision to test new marketing tactics, or are marketers just succumbing to peer pressure and a search for “the next big thing?”

So does social media marketing actually work?

According to the study, 39% of respondents reported that “they are not convinced of the value or ROI” of social media. This may be due to the notorious difficultly of tracking and calculating conversions influenced by social media.

There are many commonly accepted case studies that have shown effective use of social media for business initiatives, including:

• B2C brand building through viral campaigns.
• Brand reference monitoring and proactive customer service/complaint response.
• B2B thought leadership (using outlets such as a blog or social network).
• B2C customer loyalty programs communicated through social media and mobile marketing.

With all of these business uses of social media, questions still remain about their actual revenue generation. As social marketing practices are honed and social tracking tools improve, this may change. However, it may not. Which leads us to…

Ready to test social media marketing for your organization? It's time to create a focused social marketing plan of attack.

The Marketer’s Dilemma, and a Plan of Action

So budgets are limited, and it’s time to start dividing your resources and time. Social marketing may be a winner for your audience and business model, and should probably be tested. So what percentages should you allocate to social marketing initiatives? Here are some suggestions:

1) Keep doing what’s working

If you’re achieving good ROIs for your direct marketing, PR or advertising, don’t reduce your budgets for these channels for something untested.

2) Allocate a test budget for social media

Is social marketing right for your business model and audience? There’s only one way to be sure. Start by allocating a portion of your budget, just as you would any test initiative.

3) Plan and focus your efforts

Before you start, make sure you have clearly identified your objectives and success metrics. Then, instead of trying to engage in every social media platform, choose one or two specific actions, and focus your efforts. Some examples:

• Start a blog, and update it frequently with relevant topics for your audience.
• Set up a free Google Alerts on a specific topic, and monitor and engage in online discussions on the topic.
• Join or start a LinkedIn group on a topic of interest to potential customers.
• Create a simple series of YouTube videos answering common questions of your audience.
• Create a Facebook Fan Page or mobile site and distribute special offers to subscribers (location-specific restaurants and retailer should check out www.ruxter.com).

4) Analyze your results.

Can you attribute new customers to your online interactions? Did traffic and conversion for your website increase? Have you increased foot traffic to your locations? If so, congratulations, it’s time to allocate more budget and increase your social marketing efforts. If not, it’s either time to test other social marketing tactics, or funnel your budget and efforts back to the marketing channels you know work for your business.

So now I want to know, what social media tactics have you tested for your business, and what type of results have you seen?