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?

Printers! Take Your Mark! Get Set! GO!

. . . Or maybe I should be saying Marketers Take Your Mark. Either way, I’m seeing example after example of why printed communications need to become increasingly nimble to stay relevant in the marketing mix. I was inspired by a recent post from Pat Allen of Rock the Boat Marketing (and by the Old Spice Guy video embedded in the post)

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According to Pat, “the tilt toward real-time communicating exposes what we believe to be the greatest weakness in investment product communicating: Reacting after the fact and on a delay.” While she is looking at the asset management industry through a marketing lens – you could easily point that same lens at print service providers and in-house shops. “The Old Spice guy work is an excellent demonstration of an emerging communications competency: the preparing to improvise, the organizing to be able to react in the moment to external stimulus,” says Pat.

Old Spice Guy says “Now I’m on a boat. Look in your hand. Look back at me. Now I’m on a ship. Look at your man. Look back at me. I’m on a horse.” Can your communications shift that quickly – and look that good doing it? (Phew!)

There have been several posts recently about combining print and other digital marketing channels. Most frequently referenced is putting PURLs on direct mail. You know what? That’s already old hat. PURLs provide an additional channel for the recipient, which is good, but it is not necessarily preparing the marketer to be able to  react quickly to external stimulus from social media sites, breaking news or other market activity.

We need to enable our print campaigns to launch on a dime in support of trends gleaned from online activity. Of course, we will want to communicate with people who are already online through online means – but why not extend the learning to be able to launch the same great message to the customers we know don’t use our online channels? Or simply reinforce the online message with a tangible printed campaign?

Allen cites a social media presentation by Matthew Guiste, category manager for social media at Starbucks and successful revenue-generating programs that involved a rapid exchange of information, internally and externally. Starbucks identified mini-trends from activity on Facebook and Twitter and worked quickly to syndicate that content across multiple other social media outlets. They could also have launched a direct mail campaign – but sadly – with the response times of most organizations today – not fast enough to ride the wave of the current trend.

For direct mail (and transactional communications) to gain a broader piece of the “social media response” pie it will need to be faster and more collaborative with what is now a social media silo. If the collaboration and rapid publishing tools can be put in place – with workflows that link social media monitoring, analytics, content management, approval and production approvals – social media can be a great friend to digital printing rather than a competitor.

So, look at your social media channels. Look back at me. Look at your direct mail. Look back at me. Anything is possible. I’m on a plane (Seriously, I am.)

By Tom A. Wilde, CEO & Vice Chairman W.A. Wilde

Here we are: the dog days of summer. For marketing departments, it’s prime season for planning—for both the balance of the year and ahead to 2011. So what’s worked so far in 2010? It’s no secret that marketing departments were hit heavy by budget cuts in 2009 because of the economic downturn. However, the lessons from the prior year have started to payoff in 2010; we are more resourceful and more efficient with our smaller marketing budgets.

In 2009, some direct marketers were quick to cut direct mail from their marketing mix and focus solely on the online channel. In 2010, direct mail has made a comeback. Marketers have realized that when used effectively, it is necessary to their multi-channel marketing mix and can be one of the best tools for starting a conversation with their customers.

To that end, the advent of digital printing methods has allowed increased flexibility for companies to be more audience-focused. It’s not enough to just personalize the greeting of a marketing piece; marketers can use the technology to create campaigns that speaks relevantly to their customers at the individual level based on demographics and previous engagement with campaigns. Further, digital print technology allows for these greater design freedoms with quicker turnaround times.

Marketers can leverage direct mail as a launch pad for their online marketing efforts. For instance, a highly personalized direct mail piece can drive a customer to a PURL where they can access highly personalized online content that is specific to their engagement with the company. The PURLs then can direct customers to the company’s social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, where they can engage with fellow customers and ultimately creating a community around your company.

As you look to the rest of 2010 and beyond, remember the lessons of resourcefulness and efficiency when planning your marketing programs. Find out what channels are most effective at getting them to act, and use that marketing mix to create a cohesive marketing message. Create conversations with your customers, don’t talk at them in some channel that they aren’t even listening to.

This week’s super-coolr fold is a  Circular Event Invitation that was so good it got used twice. Hidden message: showcasing your work can lead to more business! Keep on folding.

For years we’ve been told that it’s smart spending to market to our current customers.  Patricia Seybold, Don Pepper and Martha Rogers have written volumes about how it is good business to keep and grow a customer. As far back as 1996 with One Stop Marketing, Jonathan Trivers concluded that it costs three times more to acquire a new customer than it does to re-attract an existing customer — and it costs 30 times more to acquire a new customer through through advertising than by referral from an existing relationship.  Yet even while pulling out of a recession in 2010, shiny new ad campaigns draw the majority of our budget and our attention.  We don’t work the bench; we spend big bucks to bring in a marquee shortstop. 

According to Trivers, about 95% of marketing dollars are focused on attracting new customers at the bottom of the “loyalty ladder.” I like the image of moving customers up a loyalty ladder.  Customers atop this ladder are so satisfied that they won’t leave you at any price and they are active promoters of your business. Rather than pouring out all the budget at the bottom of the ladder, companies should be spending at least 30% at the top half of the ladder leveraging existing customer communications.  According to J.D. Powers, in the auto insurance industry 56% of highly satisfied customers will recommend your business to a friend; such customers report making 2.5 actual recommendations and 46% of them say they would never leave you. Results are similar across industries.

So in an economic climate that requires smart spending, consider winning by increasing focus on your customer base. Know that this can be a really big win—like a Red Sox win against the Yankees in late September.  Why?  Because the most effective way to market to your base- increasing loyalty and gaining new sales and referrals- is also highly cost-efficient.  You can leverage the transactional documents your company must produce and deliver to customers.  In lean times, more than ever, a TransPromo strategy (yes, it’s that word again) is a home run because the transactional communications budget also supports your marketing program.

Cost-savings score big, but the game-winner is that TransPromo (or as I prefer, Transactional Response Marketing or TRM) can achieve significantly better results than more costly traditional forms of marketing such as direct mail or print/TV/radio advertising. TRM can achieve these powerful results for two reasons.  First, research shows that transactional communications are important to customers so they pay more attention to them – and therefore to the messages you integrate with these communications.  The average person will give a statement nine times more attention than a piece of direct mail.  (Less than half of direct mail is even opened.) Again, according to J D Powers, transaction documents are a key driver of customer satisfaction, comprising 41% of the consumer finance satisfaction score and 17% of the credit card industry satisfaction score. Second, the data that drives transactional communications enables you to integrate specific, personalized, highly relevant messages and offers that are more likely to please customers and/or to get them to take action.

TRM is powering winning marketing teams today.  A March 2008 study by Aberdeen Group showed that among companies meeting best in class standards, those utilizing closed loop marketing exceeded other best in class peers.  The closed loop group achieved on average 6% greater ROMI and 7% more lead conversions. Revenues per account were 3% greater and average return on marketing campaigns was 14% greater. Transactional Response Marketing is closed loop marketing applied to transaction documents. Company success stories include Avis Australia which saw response rates rise from 2.5% to 10% when invoices were utilized to extend offers vs. other approaches such as direct mail or advertising.

So do you make the business case for Transpromo or Transactional Response marketing based on immediate response rate, long-term customer retention and value, or substantial operational efficiencies? Does it taste great or is it less filling? Is TRM as switch hitter? Have I been watching too much baseball? It’s a nice hot Sunday afternoon– I think I’ll go grab a beer and ponder this at length.

Cheers.

By Nancy Harhut, Chief Creative Officer, Wilde Agency

You want a window into the human mind? Look at some direct mail pieces. How people respond to them — or don’t — can tell you plenty. That’s because direct mail is all about psychology. It’s understanding what makes people behave the way they do.

Take outer envelopes. What will make someone open one? The smallest of details can tip the balance. Is there a return address? Is it accompanied by someone’s name? Is that name pre-printed? Or was it “added on” just before going out? Then there’s your color choice. Paper stock. Postage type. Type font. All this before the headline and visual (if you even have them) register.

When you think about it, the odds are hugely against us. Everyday, people are bombarded with more and more advertising messages. Then they come home from a long day’s work, stand over the wastepaper basket, and sort their mail. We have mere seconds to deploy enough knowledge about human nature to get our packages opened.

And yet, everyday great new direct mail pieces emerge. Some of the best work in the industry is being done today. Our targeting methods are more efficient. Our options are greater. And our creative people are more talented. But the big difference, in my opinion, is that we know more about what makes people tick today than we ever have. And that’s key. Because in order to capture your prey, you first have to think like them.

Social scientists and behavioral economists have shown that human beings have developed certain automatic or reflexive behaviors. They’ve identified:

1. Compliance triggers
2. Loss aversion
3. The principle of reciprocity
4. Social proof
5. The pull of the magnetic middle

And numerous other influencers to human behavior. Take what they’ve learned and apply it, where appropriate, to your programs and communications—which helps make your customers and prospects more likely to do what you’re asking them to. Want to learn more? Register for my August 4 webinar (Why people do what they do - an how marketers can use it to their advantage) and find out how to harness human behavior triggers in your direct marketing efforts.

This week we have a fancy foiled letter fold with an exotic die cut. Very elegant – take a look!

This week’s example from Specialties Graphics in Toronto shows a creative combination of an angled guillotine cut with an accordian fold to create a very sophisticated mailer with a “tabbed” look.

It’s a fold you can feel good about.

The digital print revolution- and more so the advent of multi-media marketing that combines print, email and push messaging- has changed the way business speaks to its prospects forever.

 That the days of producing 20,000 of the same message, checking addresses for the longest record, sprinkling a few seeds into the list, reviewing one piece for quality and pushing the send button are numbered is a prognostication we’ve all accepted. For over a decade vendors have been extolling the virtues of variable data and one-to-one marketing with demos that often seem as miraculous as a Las Vegas magic show. And yet, the old one-size-fits-all direct marketing lives on in spite of the increasingly obvious shortcomings. The majority of the effort to sell marketers on variable data marketing has been focused on gimmicky creatives that spell a prospect’s name in shells to advertise a beach resort travel package.

 The exercise of bridging the gap between a flashy demo and putting a process in place that gives the marketer confidence that Joe didn’t receive Jane’s creative, or that the VIP pricing wasn’t pushed to the entire list, is rarely discussed.  Such questions as those below are rarely included in demos and many service providers end up wrestling with these as they move from demo to deployment:

1. How should information be gathered and managed?
2. How does a marketer proof variable data marketing?
3. What needs to be done to validate information?

 It’s often at this juncture between the flash and the process that variable data marketing fails or succeeds. Not surprisingly, it’s also where the most innovation is required and the hard work has to be done if variable data marketing is to become a trusted tool for majority of direct marketers.

By Julie Sullivan, VP Marketing W.A. Wilde

With social media being, well, everywhere, it was no surprise that it made its presence at the June NEDMA Awards in four new categories:

1. Best SEO Campaign
2. Best Twitter Page
3. Best Blog
4. Best Other Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)

What was surprising was the amount of entries in these categories – or lack thereof. Where competition was fierce in more traditional categories, there were only a sprinkling of entries in these new media categories. This is where I pause and ask the question, “Can someone please remind me, and all marketers, the true definition of direct marketing?”

From what I was taught and continue to practice, Direct Marketing really has two main principles:

1. Engage in a one-to-one dialogue with your target audience
2. Require your target audience to take some sort of action–call, click, move, you name it.

If you accept this definition, why is direct marketing synonymous with direct mail in so many marketers’ eyes? In the last five years or so, there has been no bigger trend than delivering relevant, personalized communications to build trust and credibility with your audience. For most companies that aren’t spending marketing dollars on broadband awareness campaigns, one-size-fits-all communications are passé–almost irresponsible in today’s marketing communications mix.

As a result, DR TV and radio, email, and yes even social media is about creating relevant, one-to-one dialogue with your target audience and motivating them to act in some way, shape, or form. If this is the case, why hasn’t direct marketing led the charge instead of being relegated to a category on the bar graph titled “direct mail” that decreases in size and budget year over year?

My plea to direct marketers is to strip the stigma of the red-headed stepchild that only creates unwanted credit card solicitations and rethink what it means to be a true direct marketer in this day and age.

How has your agency or company expanded the definition and importance of direct marketing for your business? Or is it thought of more as the dinosaur that used to have the stature of a T-Rex, but has shrunk to the size of a Flintstone vitamin?

The super-cool fold this week is from Monadnock Paper. It is a beautifully printed piece with very well executed finishing. Take a look.

The Postal Service (USPS) as we know it is in a tough spot with mail volume dropping. This drop is especially apparent in 1st Class Mail as people change the way they communicate. More are switching to electronic billing, for instance. And think about it: when was the last time you wrote a letter to a friend and mailed it? If you look at a graph of 1st Class Mail, the decline sharply falls off the page in just two years!

Guess what class of mail supports more than its fair share of the volume? You got it: 1st Class.

So as the cash cow becomes hamburger, the postal service is stuck with a lot of people, facilities, and equipment that are not necessary. By law, the USPS is mandated to break even financially; however, these additional costs prevent that. Prices can only be raised based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and by approval from the Postal Rate Commission via a rate case (what classes of mail carry what burden of the cost). And because the CPI was basically flat over the last year, it doesn’t give them any room for an increase.

But–and there’s always a but–like any good law, there was a loop hole put in. The PMG (Postmaster General) can ask for an Exigency Rate Case. This was created post-9/11 to ensure that if the USPS had to change the way they process due to extreme situations (such as anthrax security), they could go to the table for more money which in turn allows them to break-even.

In recent times, the PMG is stretching the meaning of the word “exigency” by saying that because his volume is down, he needs to do call upon this loop hole for more money. I don’t think this was the intention of the law. We’ll get to the meaning of “exigency” in a moment, but what is the PMG thinking? That by raising the price of mail that he will solve his volume problem? I’m sure that during this down economy, many thought that raising their prices would make up for the lack of volume, too. 

So really, what needs to happen is a better understanding of the word “exigency” as it pertains to a rate case. As defined, it is “a situation requiring an extreme effort or attention.” There is a coalition that is supported by many of the large mailing companies–and of course, MFSA (Mailing & Fulfillment Service Association)–to bring this to the courts. The reason? If the PMG can claim low volume as a reason for an Exigency Rate, then every time mail volume drops, there is cause to raise postal rates.

The case is urgent because the USPS could run out of cash. Congress could have avoided this by giving the USPS back the $75 Billion they paid to the government retirement plan, or by pushing through no Saturday delivery, or allowing them to close small post offices, or any of the other items they have offered up. However, a lack of focus on the part of our government means that we the people will be supporting the effort in other ways. We’ll see Congress provide emergency funds (tax money) to allow the USPS to meet its obligations; we’ll see a rate case of 5-8% at a time when prices should be going down to increase volume; and we’ll see Congress mask the amount of money in the federal chuffers by keeping the $75 Billion of USPS money.

So what would I do? I’d fight in support that volume is not a reason to raise rates. In fact, I’d be looking to dramatically lower standard mail pricing, especially for automated letters and flats. Why? This Class will be the major product line of the USPS in the future. There isn’t a better prospecting tool (even with today’s technology), and it typically leverages a completely renewable product: paper. 1st Class Mail will continue to drop. The cost of mailing a magazine needs to be stable or that business will also drop, further adding to the problem. I know the Postal Service would love to think they can be a better package shipper than UPS and Fedex, but I don’t see that happening in the near future–especially because they would have to retool.

What we need everyone to do is to ensure their Senators and Congressmen/Congresswomen know these issues are important, and we vote based on how they vote. Also, support the coalition so that we don’t just add to the problem we already have.

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Ted Kulpinski is theVP Operations withW.A. Wilde and a member of the  MFSA Executive Board

The open gate fold makes a nice display piece or hand out – but think finishing at the beginning if considering it for a mailer. It is a real problem for automatic inserters.

This weeks’ super-cool fold can add a lot of interest to a simple mailer. Take a look!

Asymmetrical Triple Parallel with Short Foldout:

The super-cool fold this week is from Pantone Color Innovations. It’s a fresh twist on a standard size and format.

Short Fold Direct Mailer with Rotated Format: