There is a lot of talk, a lot of data, and a lot of opinion out there about the impact of mobile marketing on customer behavior. In this industry, that translates into how mobile needs to be integrated into multi-channel marketing campaigns. It is said that people vote with their pocketbooks, so with that in mind, I thought I’d share some insights from the Federal Reserve. In April, the Federal Reserve released a 79-page report called “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services,” but there is a lot more in here than financial services.

More than half of the mobile phones out there (52%) are now smartphones, and they are changing the way people shop.

• 6% of all smartphone users have made a point-of-sale payment using their phone in the past 12 months, up from 1% one year earlier
• 42% of smartphone users have used their phone to comparison shop at a retail store, and 32% have used it to scan a product’s barcode to find the best price for the item
• 64% of consumers overall who use their phones to comparison shop in a retail store have changed where they purchased the product as a result of the information they found
• 44% of smartphone users have used their phone to browse product reviews or get product information while shopping at a retail store, and 70% of them changed the item they purchased based on this information
• 64% of mobile banking users have checked their account balance before making a large purchase in the past 12 months, and half of them have decided not to purchase an item as a result of their account balance or credit limit
• Approximately 27% of all mobile phone users are interested in receiving and managing discount offers and coupons on their phones, or receiving location-based offers.

This is tremendous evidence for the need of PSPs to begin broadening into mobile marketing. If your customers aren’t engaged in mobile marketing, they should be.

Download a copy of the (free) report here.

When it comes to marketing blogs, there is always a flavor de jour. Currently, it’s big data. If not “big data,” then at least more data. So it was interesting when Thorin McGee, editor of Target Marketing, asked the question, “Can you ever have too much data?”

The question was asked on a LinkedIn board, along with an online poll, and the responses so far are limited and not yet useful, but there were two comments to the post that are worth thinking about.

The line is to stop collecting data, when the cost of collecting it exceeds your ability to use it to improve your profitability. — David Himes (Direct Commerce Advisors)

You can never have enough of the “right” data. Data that is collected should provide insights and [be] collected for the purpose of answering questions that are important for the future health, development and achieving the marketing objectives of the business. Too much data is collected because it can be collected and not because it is useful or needed. And, often or not, not understood or acted upon in any case! — Rob Wilcox (WebMedia Inbound Marketing)

Print businesses are frequently talking about helping their customers collect data, but what kind of data? You append your database and set up PURL surveys to collect all sorts of information, but is that data actually going to help your customers market better? What questions are being asekd to determine which data is the right data to improve marketing results? After all, you can personalize something without making it relevant.

How do you know what questions to ask to make sure you’re gathering the right data to help your customers?

Sometimes I don’t write about QR Codes for a month. Then there are times when all sorts of QR Code related things pop up. This seems to be one of those times.

I saw a QR Code this week that seemed like a neat opportunity for printers to sell to their customers. I was sitting in the doctor’s office with one of our daughters, and there on the back of the exam room door was a poster with three QR Codes, each taking me to a different social media site (Google+, Yelp, Yahoo!) where I was encouraged to write a review of the practice.

What a great idea, I thought.  The office benefits from positive online reviews, and I benefit from having something to do while I sit and wait for the doctor to arrive. Win, win! Could I write those reviews at home? Sure, but chances are, I won’t. But if I’m sitting there waiting, chances are, I just might. (I did.)

It’s a great, simple idea that offers an excuse to contact local businesses with print solutions. There may be only one poster per business, but how many doors do they have? It also gets your services, your ideas, in front of them and presents you as a solutions provider. What additional opportunities might that open up?

Just a thought.

What is NFC?

NFC stands for Near Field Communication and the short answer would be that NFC identifies us. It allows smartphones to be identified and it establishes a radio communication. Think short range wireless RFID technology.

You may have heard of NFC and its ability to make mobile payments easy. Account information is stored on the smartphone and when in close contact with the payment receiving technology, it passes along that account information, enabling a payment to be made.

However, NFC can be a great marketing tool for mobile marketing. And there is also talk of how NFC will help in terms of rewarding customer loyalty. The bonus is that NFC is more interactive and engaging than your typical marketing message. It’s not a “look at me” marketing strategy. It’s more of a “hey, look what we’ve got for you, are you interested?” kind of connection with the audience.

How does NFC work?

NFC is like your short and skinny pal. He can’t reach very far. And he can’t throw a weighty punch. But he’s scrappy and useful in certain situations.  This low power and short-range wireless link allows for information to be passed between a smartphone and another device. While it is short range (think inches), it does not require contact. But most importantly, it allows for the information to relay back and forth between two devices instead of that relay being a one way street.

Not only is it short-range, NFC is slow. Especially when you compare it to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. But the perk is that NFC consumes very little power. It won’t strain a smartphone battery and suck it dry.

A smartphone enabled with NFC can share and interact with another NFC device, or with a “passive” NFC tag. No app needed. And the NFC tag is like a tiny chip that may be embedded (in a poster, a business card and so on) somewhere and has data ready to transfer to a NFC enabled device. The tag doesn’t even need power. Instead, the radio frequency field generated by the NFC device (like your smartphone) does the work, and the data from the tag is transferred to the device.

• What’s so awesome about NFC?
• How is NFC used in the real world?
• How can you put NFC to work for your business?

Get the answers to these questions and more in:

This week we highlight a mailer from GLS Companies in Brooklyn Park, MN. This is a great example of a creative self-mailer that fits within the realm of the newly created UPS self-mailer guidelines. Designed by Doug’s Creative in MN, this mailer presents as a postcard-sized booklet which opens sequentially in a “traveling snake” format. Each successive opening entices the reader with a snappy comment and then opens to reveal additional information. Very clever by both the designer and the printer!

Ah, when a well-intentioned QR Code goes wrong.

This was a great, well-intentioned use of a QR Code.  The marketer added it to the top left of the direct mail piece — highly visible location — with text saying, “Scan to speak to a sales rep.” I scanned the code and the landing page showed the phone number and provided links to dial, send a text message, or save to contacts. It also had a social media share button.

Nicely done! The problem is this:

1. It was sent to the previous owner of the house (who has since passed away)

2. I have never ordered from the company.

So this record has been inactive for the past four years.

The marketer (a pool supplies company) went to all that trouble to create a very well done, highly useful QR Code, but sent it to a list that hasn’t been cleaned or updated in at least 48 months. I wonder how many other inactive records it is currently mailing to?

Here’s an idea — use the QR Code to say, “Update your contact preferences.” Send folks to a page that allows them to indicate whether they still have a pool, and if so, where they purchase their pool supplies.  They could also update their contact information and select a contact preference — email, direct mail, or mobile.

Imagine how truly useful that QR Code would be! The marketer would eliminate bad records, gather data about inactive records (potentially allowing them to re-activate those customers once it knows more about them), stop offending recipients by using incorrect names, and even save money by transferring direct mail recipients to email or mobile contact if that’s what they prefer.

Now that would be a good use of a QR Code!

We’re hearing a lot about inbound marketing these days, or the use of online content (blogs, social media, SEO) to generate leads. According to HubSpot’s “State of Inbound Marketing Report,” marketers allocate 34% of their overall budgets to inbound tactics. This is 11% more than they dedicate to outbound strategies like direct mail.

Inbound marketing is a trend printers should be paying attention to, and not just because it’s competing for their print business.

Here are three reasons to pay attention to inbound marketing:

1. Inbound marketing is something printers should be doing to market their own businesses.

Prospects garnered through inbound marketing techniques are more likely to convert to sales than those garnered through outbound techniques. They have pre-qualified themselves as being interested in your services—they found you. HubSpot also found that inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound leads.

2. Inbound marketing needs to be supported by outbound marketing.  That means print.

You’ve got the leads. What are you going to do with them? Prospects find your clients’ companies based on inbound techniques, but those leads need to be followed up and nurtured along the sales cycle. Inbound marketing tends to draw people who are researching higher value products that require more follow-up and support throughout the prospect’s decision-making process. This opens tremendous opportunities for print.

3. Inbound marketing needs to be coordinated with outbound marketing.

To keep print in the mix, you need to know what’s happening on the inbound side so your client’s inbound activities are adequately supported. The more you know about their inbound marketing activities, the more involved you can be in helping them develop outbound products (direct mail, letters, posters, point-of-sale) they need.

To access HubSpot’s free report, click here.

As a utility consumer, I have needs. I need to be asked how I’m doing. I need to feel needed. I need to be understood. I desire warmth from more than just my HVAC unit.

I want to know where my money is going and why I owe as much as I do. Once I come to terms with the hard fact that I indeed do need to part with my hard-earned money, I want it to be as convenient and easy to decipher as possible. I want to be able to check my bill from my phone or computer and have the option to pay from my mobile phone.

I don’t want to call a customer service line, and I don’t want to navigate through a series of voice prompts. Parting with my hard earned money isn’t an intrinsically fun thing to do, so when I have an experience with my utility company, I’m already on the defensive. I need my utility company to open a communication with me, not just a one-way message. I don’t at all mind the utility company sharing a third-party deal with me, as long as it applies to me, and isn’t a hassle to read through.

What I can’t deal with is poor design that lacks graphics to clarify my statement. I’m a visual learner, so I need to see where my money is going. I want to see the crucial information front and center. If I have to call customer service, I want to easily find my account number and all other pertinent information in one place. I want an e-statement that looks like my bill. I find it helpful to see why I’m using so much energy, and I like to see if I was demonstrated better or worse habits in the prior year (or better than my neighbors!). I want to see actual meter readings and I want to know how to lower my consumption. I also don’t like getting a water bill, a sewer bill and a waste collection bill separately, when all three are paid with the same invoice!

Also, I need reminders. A printed bill in the mail is a great reminder, but for some bills, I prefer e-presentment and mobile solutions. When I use e-statements, it really helps to get a reminder in my email or a text to my phone. If there’s one thing I hate more than having to pay bills, is paying late fees. A simple reminder and an easy to use payment portal help me make late fees a thing of the past. I have some bills on autopay from my bank, some I pay monthly with my credit card and some I send a check for- so I count on my utility provider to make it easy on me with a reminder. The worst is getting hassled by customer service or risking a service interruption from a late payment when literally, “The check is in the mail!” Please track your remittance efforts as well, and save us all some time!

I understand that some providers have an outdated legacy system in place, but that is no excuse to not get with the times. Work with a provider to transform your legacy system into a more modern system, and begin a statement archival system for easy access in the future. Offer me online and offline options for my statement. Offer an electronic bill pay system.

Is that too much to ask?

This is one of the reasons I love QR Codes. I’ve had the QR Code for this landing page on my kitchen cabinet for a year. It was formerly stuck to a watermelon I bought in 2012. I scanned the code in the supermarket, found that it linked to some really interesting ways to cook watermelons, and determined that I would pluck it from the rind and keep it.

I’m glad I did, because one year — and a new phone — later, it was there when I needed it.  Still works, too.

One of the enduring values of print is that people keep printed promotions longer than they do any other medium. Clips, postcards, and catalogs get stacked in piles, pinned to bulletin boards, and taped to refrigerators. One of my favorite case studies came from a personalized, oversized postcard my parents taped to the doorway to the kitchen.

QR Codes have the same enduring value. Once you’ve scanned the code, the landing page to which the code points stays in the phone’s history until you remove it. There are other codes I scanned that I wish I still had in my history, such as folk bands and micro-breweries whose names I’ve long since forgotten, but I’d still like to revisit some day.

The key is do create value that people actually want to return to. That’s what most marketers fail to do, and it’s why QR Codes have become the butt of marketing jokes and the subject of articles such as The Business Insider’s “The Greatest QR Fails of All Time.”

This QR Code from Nature’s Pantry was done well. It was placed in the right place, in front of the right audience, and took me to information of value to me. It offered such value that I went back to it one year later.

If this had been a postcard, I would have lost it. If it had been an email, it would be down around email #15,5654 in my inbox. But because it’s in my phone, it’s there indefinitely until I upgrade my phone again someday.

QR Codes aren’t a gimmick.  They just need to point to something of value.  It’s such a simple concept that I think it gets lost sometimes.

About this time last year I posted a release about the new retail sales branch opened by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. Horizon was one of the first health insurance companies to take a “retail” approach to selling individual insurance policies under the then newly approved Affordable Care Act.

In May of 212, Forbes reported on the partnership between Aetna and Costco to offer the Costco Personal Health Insurance medical and dental program.  Consumers who buy the Aetna coverage through Costco will get extra discounts when they buy prescriptions through Costco pharmacies. Costo had already developed banking partnerships to allow them to sell mortgages.

This year we are starting to see the life insurance industry, particularly products geared to lower and middle income consumers, pursue retail sales opportunities. MetLife, for example, has set up kiosks in hundreds of Walmart stores. Unlike the Horizon branch which has specially trained staff to answer questions, visitors to a MetLife kiosk pick up their “box of insurance” in the form of a prepaid card and take it to the checkout. They then have to call MetLife’s toll-free number to answer health questions posed by a life agent. If the customer qualifies for coverage, the policy is activated, otherwise the card can be returned for a full refund.

Two key things we can learn from this trend:

1. As more insurance companies start courting retail partners as distribution channels, or opening up direct branches, they will need a new “retail approach” to their communications as well. This opens up new opportunities for graphic arts services like signage, sell sheets, and packaging for direct branches. It should also increase potential for transaction printers to offer statement marketing to highlight approved retail partners. Design services are a potential “foot in the door” as so much new material will need to be developed for the retail audience.

2. Partnerships, particularly distribution partnerships, can be wonderful things. Printers and other business communications professionals may also find value in new distribution channels and regional partnerships. Insurers are able to reach a broader audience that will pay a premium for convenience through retail relationships. Perhaps there are similar opportunities out there for your business.

If retail and insurance are getting married, let’s crash the wedding or at least get some good dating advice.

Elizabeth Gooding is the President of Gooding Communications Group and editor of the Insight Forums blog. She writes and speaks and provides training on trends and opportunities for business communications professionals within regulated vertical industries.

I see them all the time — those claims that you can switch from paper statements to electronic alternatives and save the environment. The one on my online banking page shows someone holding a tree seedling their hands, which I find particularly offensive. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Today, it really struck me.

Part of it is love of paper. Part of it is love for the environment. A lot of it is about my love for truth.

So here’s what I wrote back this morning:

Can you please stop promoting paperless as “green” and environmentally friendly? Data servers draw massive amounts of power off the grid, and nearly all data servers are powered by coal, not by alternative energy. The more “cloud” we use, the more damage we do to the environment. By contrast, much of our paper comes from forests that have been sustainably managed and harvested, and two-thirds of the power used by paper mills is renewable energy. Some of our impact on the environment can’t be helped, but to promote electronic alternatives as environmentally preferable to paper is factually inaccurate and irresponsible. Both print and e-media have environmental footprints, just in different ways.

Is that going to do anything but disappear into the ether? No. But if we, as members of the printing industry and lovers of paper (and more importantly to banks, retailers, and other marketers, we are consumers), take five minutes to write notes or send comments, it can. One person speaking into a vacuum doesn’t accomplish much. But a consistent grassroots movement can.

Join me, will you? Say something!

One of the most active online discussions I’ve ever been involved in involved real handwriting versus handwriting fonts for personalizing and addressing envelopes. Does one make a difference over the other? Both raise response rates, but is real handwriting worth the cost? Or will handwriting fonts do just as well?

Along with that discussion was a handful of tips for making letters seem truly more personal, such as using real stamps rather than metered mail, ensuring that the barcode was at the bottom of the letter rather than at the top, and so on, so that the impression of real handwriting isn’t undermined by these other “tells.”

After having been deeply engaged in this discussion over the past few weeks, I found it interesting when one of these handwriting font envelopes arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

Let’s count the ways the advertiser messed this up (name and logo have been blurred out).

• Hideous design
• Envelopes clearly bulk pre-printed
• Cheap, non-realistic handwriting font
• Barcode over the address rather than below
• But hey, they used a real stamp!

Sorry guys, but the real stamp doesn’t make up for the brain-jarring design and the tells screaming, “This isn’t really personalized at all!”

When using handwriting fonts with your clients, do you look at the use of the font in light of the larger design? If the design undermines the intent of the font, do you speak up? How do clients respond?

David Mamet, the award-winning American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director, has said goodbye to the traditional publishing model with his latest book, a combination of a novella and two short stories about war, and has chosen to self-publish instead.

Mamet is a formidable force in literature, playwriting, and screenwriting, so this is big news. As a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1984) and “Speed-the-Plow” (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for “The Verdict”(1982) and “Wag the Dog” (1997). (Source: Wikipedia) He has also written numerous books and written and directed many movies familiar to us all.

It’s not that print-on-demand production is better or less expensive. It’s that it offers freedom — freedom to market the way Mamet wants and freedom to earn substantially more than through the traditional royalties-based model.

The New York Times report doesn’t indicate whether Mamet will be using POD, but it’s certain that after the period of the highest volume sales has passed, he will . . . just like tens of thousands of other authors and publishers.

Self-publishing and POD have been around a long time, but the word that came to mind when I read the report was legitimacy.  A few authors have used self-publishing to rocket themselves to bestselling fame, but to date, most self-published authors are either using the model to feed their own highly targeted customer bases (corporations, nonprofits, ministries) or for their own personal use.

For someone like David Mamet to choose the self-publishing route, and consequently long-term POD, adds significant legitimacy to this approach and takes another cut at the knees of the traditional book publishing model.

I’ve been watching Season 6 of “Mad Men.” As fans know (and to boil it down to almost nothing), the show is about the history of advertising (the 50s, 60s, and 70s, so far) as seen though the eyes of copywriters and account pitchmen. The premise that the world can be moved by groundbreaking ad copy may have been true at one time. Unfortunately, some marketers don’t seem to realize that time has passed. Here’s the deal.

In 2013, consumers really have “heard it all” (about one million to seven million times per year, according to Yankelvich Research). No wonder, in this heavy laden content world, consumers both recognize and loathe being talked at and down to.

A case in point: Overuse of the term “community.” Look folks, I’m your customer, not a member of your self-anointed community. True, I may love your product design and functionality (iPad) or treasure the incomparably customer-centric way you do business (Amazon). But I’m really just an Amazon enthusiast/fan and an Apple user (Note: Once upon a time, when the Mad Men were young, I used to be part of the Apple community because it was a community …  but that’s another story).

A second case in point: The co-opting of genuine customer service by the telecom industry’s la-de-da marketing (or is it their NON-marketing) C-suiters. Have a problem? If you call in, you’re sure to get recorded messages like these:

“Please hold; your call is very important to us.”

or

 ”A customer service executive will be right with you.”

You’ve got to be kidding me, Comcast. Your customer service “executives” are paid a pittance. The big bucks go to investors and lobbyists who haunt Congress for de-regulation favors. We all know this. Get real .. or we’ll get you. Lose your grip on that monopoly and you’re done. We will remember.

We’ve been hearing about “authentic” marketing for quite awhile. It matters … a lot. But too many folks with something to sell, sell us short. We’re getting even .. On message boards and Twitter and Facebook pages and Yelp. And here’s an even bigger threat to “fool me twice”: the sharing economy. Here, from an article in The Economist, check out what is, perhaps, the most successful peer-to-peer sharing scheme yet.

 ”LAST night 40,000 people rented accommodation from a service that offers 250,000 rooms in 30,000 cities in 192 countries. They chose their rooms and paid for everything online. But their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain. Hosts and guests were matched up by Airbnb, a firm based in San Francisco. Since its launch in 2008 more than 4m people have used it—2.5m of them in 2012 alone. It is the most prominent example of a huge new “sharing economy”, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, co-ordinated via the internet.”

This! Your house and mine, now competing with one of the most price-aggressive, stable industries in the world: hotels!

It’s not quite over yet, though. Here  are a few positives for combating cons and intrusions while retaining the marketing edge and dealing with/cashing in on/exploiting the trend to peer sharing:

1. Do be authentic. It’s okay to be funny (Mayhem is) and brilliant copywriting still builds customer goodwill (brought to you by “the most interesting man in the world”). But don’t even try to cover up the truth.

2. If you have loyal customers, you already have the makings of your own “shared economy.” Group pricing? Hosted information roundtables? Shipping/logistics packages? None of these are brand new, but maybe you have a twist to add. Consider the possibilities.

3. The world is rearranging its parts, which suggests new partnership opportunities. For example, who would have thought that hands-on construction worker types– or realtors, for that matter — could so successfully partner with artsy-heartsy interior designers? The Property Brothers, that’s who… and they are cashing in.

4. Customers are both voting with their feet and screaming as they head for the exit. Voting and screaming. This could work.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

I just received a complimentary copy of Cross Media Marketing 101 (for 2013) by James Michelson, president of JFM Concepts and VDP Web. Right upfront, I had to give James props for his dismantling of a favored email stat that has been making its rounds in the blogs, Webinars, and PowerPoint presentations. It’s from “Why Email Marketing Is King” in the Harvard Business Review.  Most Digital Nirvana readers have probably seen it.

HBR cites response rates and average order values for direct mail + email, direct mail only, and email only that are on par. When you consider the extremely low cost to produce an email campaign, the report says, email turns out to be king — ROI that blows everything else away.

But listen to what James has to say about these numbers:

1. The stats are impossible without outside manipulation.

The respondents [to this study] were cherry picked from a much larger pool in order to get a 25% response rate. How do I know? Given one client’s data of 650,000 prospects with detailed sales and contact history, I can universally pick a slice and get a fantastic response with targeted offers and specific channels. With realistic constraints (such as not giving each respondent $100 gift card for simply visiting a link), the same cannot be said for 35,000 cold records. . . Not going to happen.

2. ROI has to be calculated using, not just the cost to implement the campaigns, but the costs to acquire the names.

How did the firm in question get that many opted-in email leads? . . . It is almost impossible to exponentially grow an email list from an email campaign, regardless how good the referral spiff is. For email to be king, something else, such as social media, direct mail, experiential events, paid search, point of sale, or a mix of many methods is required, and usually at substantial cost.

3. The report ignores other costs related to email, such as the cost of maintaining the database, accessing enterprise level email software (not cheap!), preparing collateral materials, and so on.

For the ROI calculations in the article to be of any use, the cost of gathering the email opt-ins must be calculated. . . Throw those figures into the mix and what happens to that massive ROI advantage claimed by email? Chance are the savings cited in the chart rapidly evaporate.

This analysis shows why it is so important to use the full costs of any marketing effort in calculating ROI for your clients’ campaigns (and your own) — and when evaluating the truth and accuracy of claims by reports such as these.

Kudos, James!