The American Forest & Paper Association recently released a report entitle “Documenting the Value of Paper.” As more and more once-printed items move into the digital space, the future of printed materials remains in question. This report addresses that question by offering five distinct ways that paper enriches lives which will likely not diminish in the future. It got me thinking – maybe there is still a market for paper, and therefore and market for print… what do YOU think?

Five Dimensions presented by AF&PA (and some interesting highlights from the report):

1. Paper informs as a learning tool. Studies show that elementary aged students actually perform better at reading comprehension when reading from paper-based books compared to e-books. Students find it easier and more helpful to employ “active” reading habits (skimming, reading subtitles first, highlighting, underlining, annotating, etc.) in paper-based books.
2. 2.       Paper reaches customers. Direct mail is still cited as the communication channel with the highest ROI for customer contact and retention in B2C marketing, followed by email. A Nielson survey found that respondent’s top three preferences for receiving advertising were paper-based – direct mail, newspapers, and in-store printed displays. Consumers who receive a printed catalog in the mail are more likely to shop online than those who do not receive the catalog. More and more people are “opting out” of email marketing lists.  
3. Paper is a permanent record for milestones in life. Paper is still used for official documents (birth certificates, graduation diplomas, titles to cars, etc.) Paper also preserves many of life’s meaningful personal moments – think family photos, baby books, childhood artwork, handwritten letters, greeting cards, etc.
4. Paper is a secure form of documentation and communication. Information stored on paper is easily accessible over a long period of time and does not need to be continuously migrated to newer technologies. Online privacy of personal information and documents is a growing concern. Electronic forms of communicating are less secure than printed forms and are open to hacking, data breaches, identity theft and fraud. In many polls, people generally prefer to have a paper version of important documents.
5. Paper is a sustainable choice. The paper industry supports sustainable forestry practices and is increasing its recovery of paper and use of recycled fiber. Recent lifecycle assessment studies show that environmental impact of paper and electronic text and communication are relatively similar.

Of course this report naturally favors supporting the role of paper and printed materials in society (it is posted on AF&PA’s website after all). Nonetheless, the information presented is based on legitimate resources and verified studies which provide an interesting literature review and summary of information that already exists. So don’t just take it from me… see for yourself!

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:

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.

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.

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!

In case you haven’t heard, the U.S. Postal Board has delayed the elimination of Saturday mail delivery slated to being August 5.

This doesn’t mean that the transition won’t happen. It just won’t happen immediately. Apparently, the board still supports the long-term elimination of Saturday mail, but it appears to be claiming that the USPS didn’t have the authority to change its own schedule and that legislation first must be passed to give it this authority.

The fallout?

Mailers don’t need to worry about adjusting their mailing schedules through summer and fall.

The USPS has expressed that, if it is not allowed to cut these $2 billion in costs by a change in schedule, heft rate increases may take it place.

In an article in DM News, there was an interesting comment from the perspective of catalogers, who apparently are very much in support of five-day mail delivery:

Our members say they’ll take one-day delivery if it translates into lower cost. That’s how much of an overarching concern cost is. — Hamilton Davison, president of the American Catalog Mailers Association

What do you think? Is the delay a relief or a concern?

I often see online discussions about the virtues of hand addressing over using traditional addressing, and when this happens, my thought is, “Well, of course!” Hand addressing stands out from the same old, same old addressing you see in the mailbox every day.

But then, so does a handwriting font. You may not mistake it for real handwriting, but it’s still different enough to grab someone’s attention. Even if the recipient’s response is, “Oh, look! Another handwriting font trying to fool me into thinking this is real handwriting,” it still gets them to look for that extra second or half-second that can make the difference.

So when I see these discussions, I remain mystified by the fact that the discussion always seems to revolve around the same old thing. To me, the more relevant question is, has anyone bothered to do a split test to see whether there is a difference between true handwriting and handwriting fonts?  Is anyone asking that question?

Has anyone out there done a split test on real handwriting vs. handwriting fonts? What was the result?

I just flipped through today’s stack of mail on the counter. There was a lot of it — flip, flip, flip — but only one envelope caught my eye. That is because it was addressed to me . . . twice.

Heidi Tolliver-Nigro

Heidi Tolliver-Walker

It was from an industry name I recognized, so I opened it. It was an invitation to attend a data analysis seminar.

I wondered if the company putting on the seminar had cleansed its data recently. I haven’t been Heidi Tolliver-Nigro in nearly two years. One would think that the double name would have been flagged and cleansed at some point. Not to mention that I now much prefer my married name over my former married name. So much for the “personal” part of the data.

It’s just a somewhat humorous reminder that, in this industry, it’s important to walk the walk and do it well. I’m quite sure that this company knows what it is doing, that the seminar will be professional and useful, and this was just an oversight. But when the competition is nipping at your heels and data management is becoming less of a differentiator than it used to be, you don’t want to be making oversights like this.

When was the last time you cleansed your customer, prospect, and contact database?

Like many others, you may have thought of LinkedIn as a place meant for posting resumes and searching for jobs. Think again.

LinkedIn just may be the best online marketing venue in the business – especially if you have a business-to-business company.

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn has recently emerged as a bonafide marketing behemoth within the social media landscape. It surpassed both Twitter and Facebook as a platform for posting marketing content, according the Content Marketing Institute report, 2013 Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends.

LinkedIn has recently amassed an astounding 200 million members. Plus, it acquires 172,800 new members every day. LinkedIn also generates the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate — 2.74% — nearly three times more than Twitter and Facebook, according to a 2012 HubSpot study.

If you’re like other business owners, you know that you need to build an online brand presence. But, like many, your eyes glaze over at the infinite number of social media options.

So, let’s simplify this. If you had to choose just one social network for marketing your business online, LinkedIn would be a pretty good place to start. It’s easy to set up. It’s free, unless you spring for the Premium plan, and it won’t take up your entire workday to follow or maintain. Here are some simple action items:

1. Sign up. If you haven’t already done so, stop everything and set up a LinkedIn account for your company. By the way, a newer, sleeker LinkedIn Company Pages, launched last year, makes it easier to connect your business with those 200 million other users.
2. Introduce yourself. Write a company profile with strong, relevant keywords. Let people know who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. Maintain your page with regular company updates and news.
3. Join LinkedIn groups. (FYI: My favorite LinkedIn feature.) Join LinkedIn groups — either within your industry or in those you’re targeting to grow your business. See what people are talking about and sharing.
4. Build contacts. LinkedIn is ultimately a great place to network. Invite people you know to be “contacts” and, likewise, accept invitations from others to join their contact list. LinkedIn etiquette generally frowns on asking complete strangers to be contacts, but you may ask existing contacts for referrals to their connections.
5. Contribute. While LinkedIn is generally a promotion-free zone, it nonetheless encourages you to share and respond to relevant news, trends, observation and opinion with your groups and contacts. It’s a great way to build brand awareness for you and your company and widen your network of professional connections.

So, thinking about giving LinkedIn a try?  Good call. May be the best thing you do today for your company.

Editor’s Note: Bob Boucher is President of Boucher Communications. A communications professional for 30 years, Bob is an experienced marketer, copywriter, journalist and content generator for enterprises and agencies. He has spent much of the past 20 years in the graphic arts and digital printing industries.

It’s a bit incongruous. The first thing you see is a Gillette ad showing Kate Upton in a seductive pose with the headline,  “How does Kate Upton like her man’s body styled? Read her mind,” with a QR code inside the thought bubble. Then you see the headline to The Business Insider article the ad is used to illustrate: “The 15 Worst QR Code Fails of All Time.”

I have a very hard time imagining that this QR Code was not scanned by every red-blooded American man not offended by that kind of thing. Even more odd was the fact that the article dubbed QR Codes “the gimmick people love to hate.” Maybe, but I’m quite certain that Gillette is hating QR Codes all the way to the bank.

The ad was offensive. It was tacky. The content to which the QR Code pointed was juvenile. But the use of QR Codes was effective and illustrates QR Codes used well.

Why? Whether you agree or disagree with the approach, it caused readers to engage with the ad—and it did so while reinforcing Gillette’s brand. Most likely, the content was created specifically for this advertisement much like the supposedly “nude” millisecond shot of model Laura Stone for the Calvin Klein campaign produced by The Ace Group a number of years ago.

One of the best practices for QR Codes is to provide alternative ways to access the content for people who don’t want to scan the code. Gillette didn’t do that. If people wanted to see it, they had to scan the code.

I haven’t talked to Gillette or its agency,  but from talking to Val DiGiacinto at The Ace Group, I know why TAG did it for Calvin Klein back then. They were going after a specific demographic that matched the demographic of QR Code scanners and they wanted the viral sharing that comes with mobile access. TAG’s Calvin Klein campaign was enormously successful, and I imagine this was, too.

It’s funny that The Business Insider chose this ad to illustrate its commentary on QR Code fails. But it did so, I’m quite sure, because it knew that the ad’s tantalizing use of the QR Code would draw people in to read the article. So it used a powerful and well-planned “the gimmick people love to hate” to great effectiveness and its own gain.

Interesting how that works.

I recently had a very interesting conversation with James Michelson, president and founder of JFM Concepts, about text messaging in the printing industry. We were talking about multichannel marketing and how text messaging fits in.

Michelson wanted to talk about the use of text messaging in a way we rarely hear it being talked about—to gather email addresses. It went something like this:

1. Pick a venue (Jumbotron, direct mail, poster).
2. Offer a great incentive.
3. Ask people to respond by short code.
4. As your reply, send a link where they can sign up for the offer.
5. On the landing page, ask them to provide an email address to receive notification of their prize and opt-in to additional communications from your client.
6. Include content on the landing page that reflects the value of the content to the respondent so that they want to opt in and continue to receive email communications beyond notification of their prize.

This isn’t going to be the approach you use for all SMS short codes (QR Codes can be used to do the same thing), but it’s one that works in an unusual way — text messaging to gather emails!

Kudos (again) to James Michelson for his willingness to share great ideas with the industry!