The opportunity to acquire new clients in this highly competitive, constantly changing new business landscape requires a newer game plan when it comes to multi-channel 1:1 lead generators.

It takes more than just technology to generate and convert leads today!

As a marketing services provider with over 30 years’ experience, I’ve worked in virtually all segments of industry and I depend on my printers to keep me up to date on technology so I can push the envelope for my clients. Client’s today demand accountability for every dollar and generating and converting sales leads is costing them more than ever! If you can offer them something that works, they will take a shot.

Creating an effective multi-media solution that works consistently to lower lead acquisition and conversion is essentially what every business is looking for today and if you can deliver that, you will own your marketing area.

One of the best ways that print providers can tap into this lucrative channel is by rethinking their product mix.

For print to maintain its viability as one of the key essentials in a multi-channel program it must evolve from its current form to a more dynamic experience. If, in nano-seconds, the receiver of your message isn’t emotionally involved in your message, you have failed. And one of the major reasons this happens is because of the rectangle!

I blame the rectangle because it became the base from which we all make our living.

Here’s why! We all have to mail something to someone and therefore the USPS usually dictates what that would be. That’s primarily why there are postcards, envelopes, boxes and bags. So we can stuff them with material we would like to receiver to act on.

Sadly, 99.9% of all direct mail fails to achieve reaction. Is that because there are essentially 4 types of direct mail, all rectangles? I believe so. Aside from now being able to version a mailing program with variable data, essentially we are limited to rectangles. And that impedes our ability to “think out of the rectangle!”

The USPS, while a truly wonderful experiment, will continue to be impacted greatly by digital communications technologies like e-mail and steaming media. Like the music and publishing industries, printers must take the initiative in providing multi-channel strategies if they want to survive. One successful tactic is to provide products that differentiate your services from every other competitor.

When I set out to develop the next generation of direct mail products, I wanted something so dynamic that results could be predictable and still affordable. The product also had to be flexible enough to be used in multi-channel or a stand-alone programs. What I discovered will change the way you think about print communications forever.

Because one picture is worth a thousand words, I will share with you some samples of a technology that I hope will open a gateway for your future.

First off, you must understand how we, as humans assimilate data. As you are screening your daily mail, for instance, the primitive part of your brain is at work separating the non-interesting things from the interesting ones. This is done autonomically. Anything that escapes this triage gets to the frontal cortex where it must fight for constant interest in order for the brain to maintain interest. If, in a nano-second you don’t make this cut, you have failed. This is primarily why there is such a low response rate for marketing messages today.

Personalization adds a small amount of familiarity to the message which pushes it to the frontal cortex because we all like to see our name. But, because of the overuse of this feature, most people quickly discard the message because it lacks uniqueness. This is the biggest problem today. Most messages come embedded in a rectangle and that impacts negatively the uniqueness factor.

In order to avoid this mediocrity, savvy creative marketing providers are employing die-cutting to shape their message holders. By altering the shape of the mailer, you can give it the ability to stand out of all of the messages a person receives on a daily basis. In fact, if you can tailor your pitch around the shape, the inter-textualization of shape and copy will push the message into the frontal cortex of the receiver and keep embed it there for assimilation. See video

By adding personalization and if possible, versioning the pitch to include gender specific or industry specific key words, you have created a triple-threat print product that will penetrate natural reader resistance so powerfully, the person receiving it will likely never forget it.

Photo A – The Fish Shaped Postcard

Above is a fish-shaped postcard that I have used many times to amortize the die. My best results have occurred when employing it in a drip campaign where I send out several different colored, personalized fish.

Drip campaign using fish shaped postcards.

Imagine receiving a different colored fish with a different personalized message every day for a week. Imagine the fun you can have with the copy.

Photo B – The Postcard with bites taken out of it

Caption B – Here is another popular shaped postcard. To promote a Jewish Comedian, I scanned in a matzoh and placed it in the background of the card. When mailed, it actually looks like a matzoh with big bites taken out.

Photo C – the Hot Postcard

Caption C – The shape and holes are die-cut out of the paper and singed color with flames are added to accentuate the shape. Ideal for Hot Press releases, sales, and as part of a shaped mailing program.

Photo D – Piggy Bank Postcard

Caption D – This piggy bank shape allows for anything related to banks or savings giving writers a wide range of copy opportunities to build off of the shape.

Another tactic is to parse your data for gender specific mailing drops. This requires manipulating the data for universal count breakdown to determine value of prospects by gender. The creative development portion should include variations of the print (and all derivatives) to include theme, color, illustrations and if possible, physical shape.

Here’s why.
Everybody responds to images that are familiar and it’s easier to imbed your message when the prospect likes what they see and have opened up paths to their frontal cortexes to you. I know, that really sounds insidious, but essentially, if your message does not get there, then you’re not getting the R.O.I. you deserve.

Also, if you’re incorporating on-line lead gathering as the natural progression in your goal, the personalization can continue by adding purls and sending them to gender augmented sites. Getting more of your prospects to opt-in for future communications touches using on-line content means not forgetting your basic copywriting inducement pitches. Too many times I read copy that makes no sense at all or is “afraid” to motivate the visitor.

Another pitfall, old static sites.
Even today, in 2010, there are still sites without any video content, which we know helps raise your Google score and encourage more hits, and that’s where you really have to engage your prospect in order to get them to share data (their personal contact info at least.) Yes, depending upon what you’re selling, small bites, even nibbles in most cases, become the goal. Surveys prove that video is more efficient at explaining the offer faster than just reading. Make sure you have updated your site before starting your program.

After the mail drop.
I prefer incorporating follow-up tele-marketing appointment setting for the sales force, but this is an optional B2B tactic. It should at least be considered.

And, when developing your analytical requirements, be sure to include actual launch dates for all contacts and include (if possible) times of day for person to person conversations.

I have found that in most B2B mailings, I receive the lowest responses when the piece hits the desk on a Monday. Higher responses on Wed. Same with telemarketing. Higher responses from 10am-12am and 2pm-3pm Tues.-Thurs.

Guidelines for Multi-Channel Programs.
I have created a flow chart/check list (fig. 2) for assisting you in developing your own Multi-channel program. It incorporates many of the elements that you should consider in creating programs for your company and, as a MSP (marketing services provider), offer to your clients. I am sure that this diagram will be modified as other 1:1 Multi-channel Marketing warrior’s send me tips to include in the next article so, as this industry is evolving so should this checklist.

Another unique mailer designed to stand out of the recipient’s stack of mail is this mailer featuring Piranhas in a fish tank. When the recipient reaches in to pull out the invitation, a Piranha on an elastic bungee snaps out of the envelope. Copy talks about “Join us for a bite and we’ll show you how to eat your competition alive!” Intended prospect is a male “C” level decision maker.

Learn non-traditional ways to incorporate direct mail into your multi-media campaigns
The merging of specially crafted messages working as part of any interactive, multi-touch marketing process elevates the print portion to the most critical element. In most cases, the highest response producing media can be the one that approaches the prospect in the most dynamic way and print has proven itself time and again as that medium. With the average business recipient being overloaded with messages on a daily basis, a well-conceived mailer will encourage interaction and acceptance in most recipients. This is very critical in getting your message to the frontal cortex of your prospect and not being discarded. For effective assimilation of information to take place it must get the reader emotionally. Very few email blasts can do that. Print still has the power to move resistance in the receiver, if addressing the need of each recipient individually.

More importantly, it is vital that the direct mail piece generates interest in nano-seconds. In order for this to take place, you may have to get away from the traditional rectangle and employ a shaped postcard or dimensional product. With traditional mailing programs generating an average of .005%, a personalized shaped postcard (fig.1) or personalized dimensional package (fig 2) can harvest double digit responses. Again, the website featured in the piece should support the program in order to make the hand off complete. This may entail upgrading your website to incorporate short videos that can explain more about the benefits of your service or product.

Learn how 21st Century marketing strategies are being deployed, and emulate them!
Attend the marketing seminars put out by your industry associations and listen to the experts. These professionals are sharing data culled from their experience and it will help you avoid pitfalls and poor launches for your programs and those of your clients. Read the books and articles by leading innovators in marketing to cull their experiences and replicate, in your own way, their process. Remember that marketing is not a one-shot process. Like branding and fishing, your hook must be in the water constantly in order to catch business.

OK, here’s one more very important tip.

Learn to position yourself differently
This is the hardest part but can be the difference between success and failure. It’s not easy thinking in non-traditional ways but in order to have your program stand out of the 3,500 daily messages your prospect receives you need to do more dynamic marketing. This also means that you have to re-think the way your media will reach the prospect and how much you will be willing to spend to get that contact. When putting a budget together, first define what the worth of a new customer is based on one-time sale, monthly activity or the life of that customer. If you can keep customers, what is the average spending per year? What would you be willing to spend in order to capture a new client? For instance, if a new client is worth $20k annually, with a gross profit of 40%, then, if you developed a program that would predictably deliver one new client appointment a week, it would be worth it to spend $10-12k on the program to develop it and $1k per week to maintain it. At the end of the year you would have generated around $1mm (if you closed every one) with a G.P. of $400k and a cost of approximately $60k. Not a bad R.O.I. and very attainable with the technologies currently available.

In today’s over saturated marketing message environment, the current cost of generating a real lead is between $600 and $1,500 per and going up rapidly. The average direct mail response rate which for years hovered at ½ of 1% has dropped significantly to 1/10th of 1% and in most cases, the mailing generated nothing. When you add up all of the costs associated with the 99.9% of the programs that fail to generate even a break-even return, short, targeted, personalized pitches stand out as more conservative to the accounting department and more dynamic to the marketers.
Your best opportunity to meet your next client is by letting them know what they are worth to you right up front.

I equate it to being able to take a potential client out for lunch and spending $100 to talk to them for an hour. Who wouldn’t want to take that opportunity? You may never get that chance if you use legacy marketing strategies. These strategies, hatched in the 60’s dictated that you get your static message out to as many people as possible for the lowest C.P.M. as possible and generate the national average (which in the 60’s hovered around 2%). This is like going to s single’s bar and winking at everybody hoping to get a date. You must start building dialog early in the relationship in order to build trust and than, need. All of your contact media must be part of the whole campaign. Websites designed 3 years ago are virtually obsolete now that bandwidth is wide enough to support streaming video and even interactive video. A good example is YouTube. This vast virtual storehouse of professional and not so professional video is a source for visual information as never before and captivates more watchers than any other site around. Make your site contain simple videos now and watch your analytics jump.

The masters of this industry, Kodak, Xerox, International Papers and the huge printing concerns throughout the northern hemisphere (RRD and Quad) are imploding. Sales for their products have plummeted and the paper they hold is crushing them.

Oh, blame the internet for making it easier to do get your news, email a client and generally do business more cost-effectively. After all, the internet created a VistaPrint and all the little knock offs. Blame the recent oil speculators for raising the price of ink and transportation a few sheckles. Hell, blame the clients for not throwing their money into another poor response marketing program.

My, my, is it possible that companies are finally demanding accountability from their CMO’s for their marketing dollars?

With the cost of every component necessary to contact prospects in all forms of media, why are they suddenly asking to justify every darn penny they spend against the sale? Oh, could it be that over 99% of all communications fails to generate a sufficient response (read: break-even)?

It’s not the printer’s or publisher’s fault. Is it? They merely brought the customer into the arena for the Creative’s to hunt. The publisher did his best to hire content providers who can produce interesting articles that draw readers onto a page where they let the ad people try to seduce them. And this is where the problem really lies.

Most creative decision makers have spent most of their careers practicing the mass-communications techniques established in the 60’s. You know, hit as many eyes for the lowest CPM and run an average.

This one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is so antiquated, so primitive, and generally so ineffective that when you add it up, it costs every company that employs it between $600 and $1,500 to generate a sales lead.

Is this print’s dirty little secret? Not yet! It’s marketing’s dirty little secret.
For years, creative people have looked to printers for ideas they can rip off (oops, I meant borrow) when pitching clients. This leaves them at the mercy of the printer because most creative people can only design traditional products like folders, brochures, postcards and self-mailers because that’s what most printers can quote on. Or, the “Millennium’s”, who believe that just web portals linked to social networks are the new fishing venues. There is a place for that too. However, with the advent of digital and its first born, variable, the static message has been rendered obsolete!

Where is the multi-channel strategy that comes with “marketing services provider?” The fact is, creative firms are imploding faster than printers. Again, the damn client wants accountability. This is primarily due to their commoditization of ideas as well as products.

And now, where closing in on print’s dirty little secret.

From my 30-odd years’ experience in creating and producing new business development programs for customers in virtually every SIC, I can attest to one, time-proven fact; print, when it’s personalized, employing the right colors, well-written prose, and most importantly, multi-dimensionality, will out-pull any other form of media communications available today!

Print will lower the cost of capture to a fraction of what it currently costs to pull in a lead! It will also stand out better, get to the frontal cortex faster, be remembered over the last streaming viral video viewed and stay in your prospect’s consciousness longer than the other messages they’re hit with while being the most cost-efficient communications format available!

Don’t believe me? Think I’m pandering to you print providers? Here’s a nasty little fact. Americans are assaulted over 4,000 times a day by media messages (that figure varies upward depending on who I consult with), and cutting through that clutter is all I am hired to do. And my first choice is always a 3-Dimensional, personalized and printed, full-color, emotionally charged, hand-assembled mailer, followed by a well-trained telemarketing person who sets up a live person-to-person 1:1 meeting. This is true multi-channel marketing.
Now, here’s my dirty little secret!

Following these guidelines has allowed my clients to generate sales appointments for under $200 a piece. Not only have some of these programs generated over 50% response rates (we actually hit the 90% response rate recently), they have allowed our clients to trim non-productive marketing programs out of their budgets and actually plan for controlled growth, even in these economically uncertain times.

And here’s what I’ve learned. The future of marketing is evolving into short run, personalized, well-targeted, “Coney Island” enhanced, B2B direct mail, versioned to go 3-deep into a prospective company with Information on Demand as an on-line back-up, handed off to a skilled telemarketing support team who’s only mission is to generate a face-to-face with a well-trained sales person. Using this system, not only can you baseline efficacy, you can actually predict expansion and growth.