Author: Joe Novak

Silos Are for Farmers, Not Marketers

Got a silo problem? If you’re like most companies doing targeted and personalized marketing, you do. You may have plenty of customer data, but it might be in different places (silos), and these places often aren’t talking to each other. As a result, your marketing is less effective than it could be. Here are some risks to having siloed data: • Unhappy customers. Whenever mail gets lost because you have the wrong address, whenever a mail piece arrives with a bad name, or you offer to sell a long-term customer a product they already own, you risk alienating that customer. • High costs. The average price of every piece of returned mail is $3 (Source: Pitney Bowes). This is not just the postage and printing. It’s the cost of the piece coming back to you, figuring out what went wrong, and taking the time to fix it. • Lost sales. How many marketing opportunities are lost because the data on customers’ preferences and behavior is siloed in different departments? That translates into lost revenue. Let’s look at five steps for getting rid of those silos. 1. Connect inbound mail to outbound mail. Build in tracking mechanisms that allow you to connect the incoming to outgoing mail. This can be as simple as adding a barcode unique to each participant. When the response envelope comes in, the barcode is scanned. This connects the incoming mail to the outbound file, linking the customer information together. 2. Centralize data capture. Centralize mail processing in one location. Capture mail coming in from marketing, sales, customer service, web forms, and anywhere else in your company. 3. Extract what you need. Your mail contains lots of essential details that can be useful to your print and digital marketing. Extract all of the insights you can, including names, addresses, channel preferences, transaction history, and customer surveys. Input it into a centralized database that can be accessed throughout the organization. 4. Look and learn. Assign someone with a marketing and data background to analyze your database to understand what it tells you. Contained in there are critical nuggets about customer behavior, channel preferences, and more. Need help? Just ask! 5. Put it to use. With a closed-loop on your mail communications and a centralized, up-to-date database accessible by all departments, you have a powerful marketing tool at your disposal. Take what you can learn and use it to improve your targeted and personalized direct mail marketing or other customer communications.

Got a silo problem? If you’re like most companies doing targeted and personalized marketing, you do. You may have plenty of customer data, but it might be in different places (silos), and these places often aren’t talking to each other. As a result, your marketing is less effective than it could be. Here are some […]

“Do You Really Know Me?” From: Your Customer

“Do You Really Know Me?” From: Your Customer

To create genuinely personal communications, you need to know your customers. This requires more than knowing basics like name, address, and gender. It requires knowing more about who your customers are. Let’s take an example from the world of sports. For example, when we think of hockey fans, we might think of demographics such as […]

Do Self-Mailers Have Benefits Over Direct Mail Envelopes? You Bet!

For many businesses, direct mail letters are their “go-to.” They are inexpensive to produce, can include BREs and other inserts, and depending on the design, can seem more personal than self-mailers. Still, the popularity of self-mailers is growing. They, too, are inexpensive and have many benefits. Self-mailers are created when a single piece of paper […]

WHAT IS TRENDING? The 5 Most Consistent Direct Mail Trends That are Still Working

WHAT IS TRENDING? The 5 Most Consistent Direct Mail

The national direct mail database Who’s Mailing What! (WMW!) recently analyzed its database of more than 130,000 mail pieces to find the strongest, most consistent direct mail trends over the past 20 years. We’ve picked five that we think are most relevant to small to mid-sized businesses. How many of these do you see in […]

Lessons Learned from Real-Life Split Testing

Real-Life Split Testing

Real-Life Split Testing – If you want to know what’s working, test it. Is this recipe better than that one? Is this pair of shoes more comfortable than those? Marketing is no different. By taking a portion of your list and testing one element at a time, you can find out what works best. Even […]

Why You Need a Web-Based Portal for All Marketing Collateral

Is it possible to have a single, web based portal for all marketing collateral? The answer is yes. Learn how in this guide. Marketing collateral encompasses a lot and, as a result, can be difficult to keep track of. Wouldn’t it be easier to have one place to see your company marketing and promotional tools? […]

Is Brand Awareness Worth the Investment?

We all want to sell more products and services, and for decades, brand awareness has been the subject of research and study. Is this a good investment of your marketing dollars? To what extent does brand awareness truly influence the final purchase decision? As it turns out, quite a lot. Here are the results from […]

5 Reasons to Invest in Personalized Print Over Time

No doubt—getting a quick boost in sales feels great. However, the biggest profits come from long-term customers who provide recurring revenue over time. This is particularly true when it comes to investing in personalized print. Here are five reasons to focus on recurring personalized print programs rather than “quick hit” campaigns: 1. Build relationships. To […]

Marketers Identify Their #1 Priority in the Next Five Years

If you had to name the top priority for marketers today, what would it be? If you said creating a positive Customer Experience (CX), you’d be right. Sure, everybody wants to increase sales, but without a good customer experience, that’s very difficult, if not impossible, to do. CX is your customers’ perception of how you […]

Top 5 Content Marketing Best Practices

You’ve heard people talk about the value of content marketing. It’s one of the most important ways that people find you. If you are delivering content via digital channels, prospects can immediately click through to learn more. If your content is being provided in print, this is often what drives them to check you out […]