For those involved in data-driven printing, other people’s direct mail horror stories can be a great resource for refining your own workflow to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen to you.

Here are three of the latest disaster stories from members of LinkedIn’s Direct Marketing Association (Official) discussion group. You might want to put down your coffee before reading so you don’t burst out into laughter and spit it at the screen.

When I was just starting my DM career, the blank spots for personalization were inside parentheses and usually had copy that said (insert name) as a reference for production purposes. You guessed it! When the material was printed, all the personalization spots were printed exactly as the original boards, i.e. with a salutation that said: “Dear (insert name).” It was just a test, but nonetheless, we printed 50,000 pieces that had to be trashed.

One of my insurance client’s mailings to home/auto policyholders for renewals also included “Dear Deceased.”

We lasered 11,000 (of a 150,000 run) before someone noticed the bottom line of the address read “City, State, ZIP.”

These are a funny read, but I’m sure it wasn’t funny when these things actually happened. The good news for us is that we can learn from someone else’s disaster.

Has your client checked its name field and cleansed it for “deceased”? What proofing processes do you have in place to ensure that variable field markers are not printed as text? It seems impossible until it actually happens to you.

So how about you? Got any of your own disaster stories to share?

I love the member polls from Print Buyer Online. It’s always fun to go in there, poke around the archives, and see what print buyers think about different issues and compare them to how printers think about them. You can learn a lot that way.

PBO’s most recent closed poll (7/13/2010) is on the issue of monochrome digital printing. How is it being used? The results are interesting. Here’s what poll respondents said:

a) Black-and-white is dead. We’ll never go back now that we print in color (12%)

b) We’ve stayed with monochrome but have added a transpromotional touch to our statements with personal and relevant messaging that helps to cross-sell our products and services (18%)

c) We integrate monochromatic design themes occasionally to reduce printing costs (24%)

d) We use monochrome print and divert print cost savings to fund online elements that support campaigns such as email, mobile messaging and personalized URLs (6%)

e) Our print jobs are a mix of color and monochrome and our printer utilizes “job splitting” (printing color pages on color printers and B/W pages on B/W printers) to help keep costs down (41%)

The number that jumped out at me is the 18% of poll respondents who say they are integrating variable messaging into their black-and-white documents. When we think of selling 1:1 printing, we normally think about the need to go around print buyers, whose job is to hold the line on price. But this poll suggests that print buyers are increasingly tasked with understanding value and marketing content than they used to be.

Also standing out is the 12% who said that they’d permanently switched from black-and-white to color. Again, we normally think of print buyers as holding the line on price. Although the cost-efficiencies of color have come down greatly, black-and-white still costs less. Again, the print buyers in this poll are showing preference for value over price.

This isn’t yesterday’s print buyer.  Got any stories to tell?

When we hear about digital media consumer studies, we’re always focused on the growth in digital media and it’s impact on revenue and print. But to me, the more interesting story is usually buried under the headlines.

That was the case with IBM’s third annual Digital Media Consumer Study. The study is part of a research series that has surveyed nearly 10,000 consumers over the past three years. Like all consumer studies, it reveals that digital media use has grown at a staggering pace.

• Between 2007 and 2009, mobile music and video adoption increased fivefold.
• Online newspaper penetration more than tripled.
• 53% of surveyed users are regular users of social networking sites.
• 40% regularly read online newspaper.

To me, however, here’s the part that’s really interesting. This year’s research shows that growth in more established digital media services such as social networking and online newspapers sites is now being driven primarily by consumers older than age 45. That got my attention.

We think of older consumers as focused on print. We take older consumers for granted. Sure, tweens, teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings are focused on digital media, but — we tell ourselves — at least the more established pocketbooks and purchasing power still love print. At least they haven’t been lured by the siren of digital media.

Now they have.

So while IBM’s report talks about how the shift to lower-revenue digital media is creating a revenue shortfall, I’m stuck on the fact that we’re losing the 45+ age consumer to Facebook and Kindle. I actually had a conversation recently in which the last words I heard from this world-class, internationally known designer (over the age of 50) were, “Facebook me.”

In this industry, we talk a lot about multi-channel marketing. In reality, this is usually limited to direct mail to personalized URLs or a combination of email and print. “Multi-channel marketing” hasn’t yet really extended to online communities and other digital media.

If print is going to survive, it needs to. That means integrating print into the digital world in which consumers — including the 45+ consumers we’ve historically taken for granted — live. If you don’t know how to do that, you might want to bring someone on staff who does.

Have you ever gone into your own website as if you were a customer and tried to use it? Have you tried to make a purchase or locate basic items like contact numbers, company address, case study files, service descriptions, and case studies? If so, how did you fare?

I went through a humbling experience over the weekend. I’d released a new report, “QR Codes: What You Need to Know,” and the emails started coming. But they weren’t the emails I was hoping for.

Your payment buttons are confusing.

How do I download my files?

How do I select which reports I want to buy?

Help!!!

Those are not the kinds of questions I wanted to hear. For every person who took the time to ask, certainly there were plenty of others who simply bailed. How many sales had I lost because, over the years, I had been more concerned with adding content than addressing navigation and usability?

I finally bit the bullet and dedicated the weekend to completely redesigning the Digital Printing Reports website from the ground up. As I selected content from existing pages, it was one groan after the other. Way too much text. Cluttered pages. Outdated content. “Last update” notices that were a year old (three or four updates ago). Payment buttons that were more like a maze than a way to buy things.

At the end of the weekend, I had a website with less than half the content but content that was easier to find. Intuitive links. Streamlined payment options. A site that didn’t give you a headache from the moment you logged in. And I have client complaints — I mean constructive and helpful comments — to thank for it.

Many of us know that our websites need updating, but as the old proverb goes, we’re too busy chopping wood to sharpen our axes. Are there client comments and suggestions ringing around in your ear? Maybe it’s time you set down your ax and sharpened it.

QR codes are the hot topic lately. So I thought it might be fun to share a few facts about QR codes many people may not know.

1. QR codes can be in color. Pick one — red, green, purple. Just make sure the contrast is high enough for the readers to pick it up.

2. QR codes can be branded. Because codes can be incomplete (the percentage of allowable incompleteness varies based on the code), they can be branded. QR codes are showing up with logos inserted inside them more and more often.

3. QR codes are really a sub-category under 2D barcodes. 2D barcodes can be proprietary or non-proprietary. There are two primary types of non-proprietary codes used in the United States today — QR codes and Datamatrix. Other 2D codes, such as Microsoft Tag and BeeTag, are proprietary and require proprietary readers. Some proprietary readers can read generic QR codes, as well.

4. What’s the point of proprietary codes? For the marketer, they work reliably and consistently because they don’t have to be all things to all people, as non-proprietary codes do. They do one thing and they do it well. For the code developer, they provide a revenue stream based on sophisticated back-end services, such as tracking, integration, and 1:1 capabilities.

5. QR codes can be “smart.” They can read the location and characteristics of the phone being used to read them. Then they customize content based on location, time, and capabilities of the phone, among other characteristics.

And some people think QR codes are just little black-and-white boxes.

This information is excerpted from the report “QR Codes: What You Need to Know,” part of the Marketer’s Primer Series.

One of the questions often asked about QR codes if whether people will read them at home or in their offices where their computer is available. Desktop computers have larger, easier-to-read screens, so it makes sense that people would prefer their computers over snapping the QR code to view content with their cellphones.

Except that isn’t what’s happening.

Case study to case study, we see that from 65% to 70% of people who respond to campaigns with a QR code use the QR code even when they are in the presence of a desktop computer.

Just this morning, I released “QR Codes: What You Need to Know,” a 40-page report on the technology, use, and best practices of QR codes. In it, there are three case studies that specifically tracked QR code use in the presence of a home or office computer. Overwhelmingly, people chose the code.

It’s why QR codes are showing up on everything, including email and webpages.

What’s the reason? Is it because it’s faster than typing in? The QR code option stores the information on their phones? They’re heading out the door and don’t want to be tied to the chair? They want to test the code? Maybe they have just become so accustomed to use their phones for everything that it’s compulsion.

Whatever the reason, this appears to be a well-established trend. When given a choice, people are choosing to snap QR codes over typing in URLs at least two-thirds of the time.

Currently, there is a discussion on one of the LinkedIn boards about elevated response rates that got me all riled up. Those conversations always do. The question was whether or not to believe elevated response rates (30%, 40%) for direct mail campaigns.

I’ve got a few opinions about that. After all, for my Marketer’s Primer Series of reports (digital print, 1:1 print, personalized URLs, Web-to-print, green marketing), I read every case study in the Print on Demand Initiative (PODi) database. Plus, I’ve written hundreds of my own. There are some very clear trends in terms of elevated response rates.

Response rates tend to be very high when marketers are . . .

1. using an in-house list

2. aren’t asking people to buy something

3. using other attention-getting techniques like over-sized cards, lumpy mail, and audio chips

4. using multi-touch campaigns (email, SMS to non-responders)

5. using extremely targeted, relevant lists

6. offering a very compelling incentive for little effort on the recipient’s part

Among others.

That’s why it’s so critical to dissect each campaign and understand what caused the elevated (or not so elevated) response rates.

It’s also important to put response rates into perspective. I’ve seen plenty of campaigns with single-digit response rates that were phenomenally successful. Before evaluating response rates, you need to know the conversion rate. There are plenty of campaigns that are so targeted that a low response rate still yields a high conversion rate and great ROI.

It also depends on the value of the product being sold. High-value products don’t need high response rates to get great ROI.

In my opinion, the response rate conversation is really outdated and offers very little value. Really, it should be about ROI. It’s weaning marketers off that response rate discussion that will be hard.

I just read the greatest commentary. Written by Alex Bogusky, co-chairman at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a Denver-based advertising and marketing firm, he opened by saying, “Let me start out by saying that I know nothing about media.” Considering that he was writing in Media magazine on the topic of the future of media, it was a bold thing to say. He then went on to say that one of his great sources of pride is a t-shirt he created on which is printed, “I don’t even know what I don’t know.”

Click here to read the article.

Bogusky then made a powerful point about some of the hottest media trends today — there are no experts. For example, in social media:

Where did all these social media experts come from so quickly? What makes somebody a social media expert, anyway? And finally, why on earth would anyone want to be an expert? Expertise seems to require experience and the ability to use that expertise seems to require that the future closely resemble the past.  . . . I highly doubt the media future is going to closely resemble media’s past.

At that point, I was cheering. In some things, you can be an expert. Things that relate to numbers and equations — things that are predictable and finite. But when it comes to marketing and media, which are certainly neither of those, we’re really acting on educated speculation. Things are changing so quickly. While certain types of campaigns in specific verticals with well-defined parameters might be fairly predictable, just about anything can derail them. I wouldn’t want to make a living out of predictions.

Sure, testing can help. Done consistently and well, it creates some level of predictability, but only as long as all of the parameters are finite and stay exactly the same. Which rarely happens.

This leads me to another quote from Bogusky. He talks about a book he read called Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. The book was about wilderness survival, and why certain people survive catastrophes and others do not. Although it’s a wilderness survival book, he took away an important business lesson.

[The author] found some fundamental differences in survivors. The first being that survivors more quickly realized and accepted that they were lost. It seems that people who continued to think they “knew” where they were and stuck to the “plan” died more often than the folks who recognized that the rules had changed and that their old beliefs were useless.. . Another quality of survivors is that they don’t look for safety in the emotional security of where they found safety in the past.

He then applied this concepts to the new frontiers of media.

Let me paraphrase liberally. We have no idea where we are. We shouldn’t pretend we are experts. Instead, we should be focusing on asking questions, learning, and staying untethered to the past so we can react and adapt quickly to a rapidly changing environment.

From a printing industry perspective, we should not be relying on “experts.” Webinars titled, “How to make money using social media” or “How to succeed with QR codes,” for example, should be re-titled “How I made money using social media last week” or “How I succeed with QR codes yesterday,” because that’s really what they are. We need to learn from others’ experiences and tuck away the lessons in our mental archive, but we also need to keep them in perspective. Everybody is in a continual learning curve these days.

To thrive in this environment requires a self-generated source of curiosity, a desire to experiment, to test, and to push the envelope. Printers, especially those labeling themselves “marketing services providers,” need to be doing their own research and generating their own understanding of how these media and emerging applications fit into the larger marketing landscape and what seems to make them tick. Then be willing to change their opinion son a dime.

You can learn from others, but when it comes down to it, the client’s eyes are going to be on you. You may not be able to predict the future with absolute accuracy, but you can be prepared to justify the decisions you make.

How many digital printers think about marketing digital printing as green printing? Not just from a technology standpoint but also from an applications standpoint?

When you switch to database marketing — reducing your mailing by 90% by culling out only the top 10% of your database to personalize and mail to — you are also GREENING your print marketing at the same time! When you personalize a booklet, reducing a static 72-page booklet to a 16-page personalized one, you are greening your projects at the same time. Think about how much you help your clients lower their environmental footprints in terms of paper, ink, energy use, transportation . . . and the list goes on.

I just released a report titled “Greening Print Marketing: A Practical Guide” that has an entire section devoted to how digital print applications “green” print marketing. We’re used to looking at the case studies in terms of how they affect the bottom line (and rightly so), but many of those same applications have a green angle. Every time you cut costs through efficiency, targeting, and personalization, you save your carbon footprint, too.

I’m also fascinated by just how poor a carbon footprint e-media has. The more I learn about it, the greener print looks.

The digital printing industry really has an environmental story to tell. I wonder how well we’re telling it?

Digital printers these days are being pressured to “go green,” which typically starts with adding PCW (postconsumer waste) content into paper. But is PCW really all that it’s cracked up to be?

I recently did some investigating into this question and got some surprising answers. In fact, there is a legitimate argument for the fact that PCW might have a less positive impact the environment than preconsumer waste.
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If you had to answer the question, “What are the best practices in 1:1 printing?” what would you say? I have to answer this question every three or four months when I update “1:1 (Personalized) Printing: Boosting Profits Through Relevance,” a primer and educational tool for printers and their sales teams.

This time around (December 2009 update), I made some significant additions and expansions.

QR codes: I added QR codes into the list of channels and media strategies that should be incorporated into 1:1 campaigns. Not that every campaign should have one, of course. It depends on the target audience. Especially for clients targeting 15- to 35-year-olds and the mobile professional culture, QR codes should absolutely be in the mix.

Expanded focus on multiple media: Increasingly, successful 1:1 campaigns do not work alone. They are working in tight integration with other media, using the same branding, messaging, and business rules. A campaign might use email to promote an upcoming print offer, for example. Then it might use email or SMS text messaging to nudge non-responders or confirm registrations, orders, or other actions the respondent might have taken.

Use of multiple response mechanisms: Too often, marketers provide only a single response mechanism for their offers. Yet, case studies increasingly prove out that having a mix of response mechanisms (print, general URL, phone, personalized URL) can increase response. You have to allow people to respond using the media with which they are the most comfortable.

If you look carefully at the recent case studies, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s neat when you see this stuff actually being implemented — and it works!

I’ve been writing on QR codes lately (two-dimensional barcodes that can be snapped with a mobile phone camera or other scanning device and automatically take the viewer to a website with marketing or other content), but it’s rare that I see one in real life.

Last night, I was at a restaurant and wished there was a QR code and didn’t see one. It would have been nice to be able to compare menu choices on nutritional content. Which had higher fat content? The filet mignon or the chicken smothered in ham and asparagus? You’d think it would be the filet, of course, but with all the butter in the chicken dish, I wasn’t sure.

It was a nice Italian place, the kind that doesn’t post its nutritional content on the walls. With its upscale clientele, it would have been a perfect location to use QR codes to take patrons to a nutritional guide if they’d wanted to.

It just a reminder that there are places for QR codes all around us. Are you taking advantage of them?

As printers increasingly see themselves as marketing services providers, they are proactively developing marketing and business development expertise that is a benefit to their customers. Unfortunately, there is one aspect of good marketing that is too often overlooked — copy editing.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve winced when looking at sample marketing campaigns or — equally distressing — these printers’ websites. There are spelling errors, grammar mistakes, obvious typos, and gross errors in capitalization and style. Perhaps to the printer, the copy looks fine. But to anyone who knows basic editorial rules, it looks like the company has no idea what it’s doing.
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Have you noticed? The best practices for personalized URLs are becoming more sophisticated. You may not always see those best practices listed, but they are being reflected more and more often in industry case studies. It’s really neat to see the evolution.

It struck me because, earlier this week, I released an update to “Personalized URLs: Beyond the Hype,” a primer and training and educational tool for printers and marketers.  In the best practices section, I had previously separated out the best practices into two categories: those commonly seen in industry case studies and those not yet commonly seen but practiced by some of the industry’s leading practitioners. During the process of updating the report, however, it struck me the extent to which the two are converging. In fact, in the October 2009 update I removed the distinction between the two classifications.
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EcoAlign, a strategic marketing firm specializing in green issues, has released a report that shows that, while consumers care about green issues, they don’t understand much of the basic terminology or make clear distinctions between terms. So when we talk “green” to our customers, do they understand what we’re talking about?

Although the report, “Green Gap Redux: Green Words Gone Wrong,” is focused largely at the energy industry, it has important implications for all companies marketing “green.” With printing — digital printing, in particular — really focused on its green benefits, it ought to be listening closely.
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