Oops! Thrifty Car Rental, whose case studies of great, personalized marketing have shown up around the industry (and even in my posts on Digital Nirvana, most likely) has made a boo-boo.

According to an AP report, Thrifty sent out an email offer for “rent 16 days, get 1 day rental free” not to the select list of customers it intended, but to the entire list. This included non-customers who had simply signed up to receive emails from the company.  Now because the story has gone out on AP, its mistake has been magnified even more.

The company rescinded its offer, and from what I can gather, it didn’t offer any kind of mea culpa discount coupon or anything else. Just the apology for the mistake.

Great companies often turn marketing disasters into profit wins if they handle it right. It’s not unusual to hear of companies who end up earning more from a blown campaign through a well-handled apology than they would have from the original campaign itself.  So what might Thrifty do?

First, I am curious why it didn’t simply honor the offer. I would be surprised if a 16-1 offer created an actual loss, so why not let it stand? Avoiding potential inventory issues? I don’t know.

Another option would be to craft a great, personalized direct mailer both to the originally intended list and to another, broader selection of existing customers. Apologize again for the mistake, but indicate that they  — specifically, using their name — were part of a select group for which the offer would be honored. “Not everyone is getting this offer!” This creates that sense of privilege and exclusivity. Obviously, print is costs more than email, but it also carries more weight in terms of sincerity, trust, and relationship (which the company could probably use right now).

If you were Thrifty’s MSP, what would you suggest?

A client of mine sent me this funny example of personalization gone wrong. It came from his graphic designer, who had received a very personalized offer — her name emblazoned across the front of a variety of pieces of apparel.

Fun apparel JUST FOR YOU!

Featuring the name JAUTELIER!

Order early for Father’s Day!

The card showed a variety of style of outerwear emblazoned with the designer’s name, including one with a very cool graffiti design that read, “It’s a JAUTELIER thing!”

Cool design. Cool idea. Problem is, her last name is Gautelieri.

When personalizing a marketing piece, it’s always important to get the spelling of the recipient right. But in this case . . . that just hurts!

While U.S. consumers are increasingly using various online research channels to research their purchases, QR Codes are not one of them. This, according to a study conducted by Radius Global Market Research (GMR).

• When asked about current experiences with QR Codes, only 12% of consumers said they had scanned QR Codes for product information.
• The percentage of consumers who plan to use QR Codes in the future was also 12%.

Does this confirm naysayers’ views that QR Codes are a passing fad? Absolutely not. Don’t be misled!

I have said many times before, the problem is not that people are not interested in using QR Codes. The problem is that marketers aren’t using QR Codes to send people anywhere worth going. It’s not rocket science. If every time I scan a QR Code, I get sent to the corporate website where there is nothing of value to me, I’m going to stop scanning QR Codes.

If you touch a fiery stove burner enough times, you’ll stop touching it. It’s not the fault of the stove.

QR Codes could be replaced by AR, NFC, or some other technology of the future (the hypothetical replacement for QR Codes being heralded by many QR Code naysayers), but those technologies won’t “fix” the problem because they still have the same issue of what’s on the back end. In fact, the back end of AR and other technologies is even more challenging to produce well, so if marketers can’t get it together with relatively mobile-optimized websites with information relevant to the product in hand, it’s unlikely that they’ll do better with something more complex.

As a PSP, the challenge faced by customers should be relatively simple to address. If you see a QR Code on a direct mailer, product packaging, or anything else you are being asked to print, ask the question, “Why is this code here? What is it supposed to accomplish? Where does it take people? What value will they get out of it?”

Something that simple could make the difference between the consumer scanning a QR Code in the future . . . or not.

I am (barely) a Millennial. Born in 1980, I rest on the cusp of what Time magazine recently profiled as the “Me Me Me” generation and described on the cover as “lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.”

Guess which magazine isn’t getting a Christmas card from me this year.

Overall, the article has received a great deal of exposure and backlash because of the attention-grabbing, slightly hyperbolic title and the overarching assumptions that Millennials crave less responsibility, still live at home and are obsessed with themselves. I’ve read many opinions on this feature that debate the statistics and accusations the article boasts, but the core of what separates the “Millennials” from prior generations is the advancement of technology during their (our) lifetimes.

AdAge makes a troubling assertion (for direct marketers, at least) that “Among other things, baby-boomer marketers need to accept the fact that Millennials have not inherited their parents’ love for the “touch” of paper.” There is some truth to this statement, but as a Millennial that checks his mailbox every day, there is also a major balancing act that every marketer must accept in marketing to Millennials – the same tricks don’t work anymore, they just work in different ways.

Millennials may not “crave” the touch of the physical printed piece, but still will interact with it given the right pairing with technology. Whether this comes in the form of augmented reality, near-field chips or smartphone-based apps and QR code scanning, ways that allow this connected generation to interact with their mail and magazines using a smartphone or tablet will be key in keeping direct mail relevant to this generation. For example, I LOVE to get coupons in the mail, but I’d like it even more if I could scan and save them to my iPhone. The ideals demonstrated by Google Glass also give insight to how this generation will consume information in the years to come. Whereas the newspaper or Yellow Pages may be less relevant to a younger generation, the information contained within will not be.

The past ten years have spawned the buzzword “multichannel”’ marketing, but Millennials are leaps and bounds ahead of the curve. They were raised on multichannel marketing. Television based off of their video games; magazines that point to websites; College acceptance letters that point to social media sites. This technology has never been new to them, so it has become an expectation in the way they do business and the way marketers HAVE to market to them. So there’s another way Millennials are here to save us, they will push companies to try harder and smarter and the best, data-driven messaging will rise to the top.

Marketers are taxed with using all of the data at their hands, especially from “Big Data” via social interactions and from employing advanced segmentation techniques in marketing to Millennials. Without these methodologies, messaging will be ignored, as it competes with the constant stream of stimuli coming from smartphones, emails, social networks, television, postal mail, video games and soon with augmented reality and wearable computing.

It’s Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend, so it’s time for some levity. Once again, my husband and his much-targeted facilities budget is to thank for this one.

You don’t see hand-addressed business letters much anymore, so this was something that stood out. But since it was a business letter, not a personal letter (like the hand addressing used in nonprofit solicitations), that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

The company strove for the personal touch with the hand addressing, but the message inside left much to be desired. Home-grown printing in toner-saving mode, the name of the company emblazoned across the top but the marketing copy promoting a different product entirely, pricing of “$1.69 each!” but for what? The sticky note covered most of the clear lightbulb printed on the white background the pricing applied to.

Then there was the question of the personal touch itself. The letter was hand-addressed and the sticky note hand-written, but why wasn’t the recipient’s name included? If the salesman wanted to use the folksy, personal approach, mightn’t he have written, “Stewart, do you still have T12 light bulbs?” But the personalization obviously didn’t go that far.

Nice glossy business cards, though. Two of them inside, in fact. So how does that match up with the in-office toner-saving mode for the flyer?

Sometimes marketing is just a train wreck, and you’ve got to wonder, where was the fail? Was it a company that had been approached by qualified print service providers and rejected their help? Thought they could renegade it on their own? Did this one get missed by the sales forces of the MSPs in the local area? How about the printer that produced those nice, high-gloss business cards? Are they promoting ancillary services to their business card customers? If so, was this company made aware of them?

So many questions when you see something like this. The moral of the story is, there are still lots of marketers out there who need your help! (And not just for the printing!)

The American Forest & Paper Association recently released a report entitled “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. 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!

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?

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?

I recently did some research around the industry on the impact of the upcoming Saturday First-Class mail stoppage. In the end, the consensus seems to be that it might be highly inconvenience for awhile, but marketers will figure it out.

One of the biggest concerns is for bill payments since consumers will have one less day for their payments to arrive. But Gene Del Polito, president of Postcom, made an interesting observation. If that’s a concern, why not make paying bills easier? Free online bill pay (that is one of my pet peeves — billers who charge for online payments that save them money and improve their cash flow anyway) or pre-paid BREs if they aren’t offering them already.

If all someone has to do is drop a check in the mail and not worry about finding an envelope, addressing the envelope, and applying a stamp, it’s that much easier (and faster) to make the payment.  The easier it is to respond, the less impact the Saturday First-Class mail stoppage will have.

I thought it was a good point. How about you?

Years ago, I wrote about a study conducted by the Digital Printing Council on the lamination (or non-lamination) of direct mail and how the various toner-based presses fared in the mail stream. The topic is still around apparently, since it is kicking up quite a storm in one of the industry discussion groups.

The poster expressed frustration that the USPS had been “particularly cruel” to his non-laminated direct mail piece and was looking for advice on the best way to create scuff-resistant mail.

Here are a few interesting responses:

Well, being in the lamination business for 25 years, you know what I would suggest. Not sure what USPS did and not sure what type of DM you did, but coatings may still scuff. Lamination will certainly preserve the piece from tearing or the ink being scuffed. It will add to the cost, but so will coating or even bagging your piece.

(Chuck Thompson, Business Development Manager, Cosmo Films)

If you print digitally and mail, without coating or laminating, you will get scuffing and poor looking pieces. I see from your profile that you are from the manufacturing side of the industry. Welcome to the user side. Toner does not absorb into paper. It sits on top and is easily rubbed off by rollers . . .  Next mailer, budget for coating or laminating or have it run on old fashioned offset lithography.

(Ed Keenan, Owner, Document Depot [NYC])

Ryan’s dilemma may create an interesting opportunity for him. DM users are always searching for ways to improve response. It is possible that film lamination could add visual impact that would do just that. For the next mailing try laminating half of the pieces, then mail using an A-B split (every other name receives the laminated piece). Code the labels, address, or response piece to show which lot generated every response. You may be surprised at improved results.

(Mike Burrows, President and Owner at Burrows Consulting, Inc., Washington D.C.)

Other suggestions included printing on synthetic substrates, using offline UV, and to keep costs down, using a lighter weight stock and laminating only on the messaging side and leaving the address side uncoated.

What was interesting was that, once the suggestions were proffered, they solicited responses from other group members who found that, at least from the technical side (not the marketing response side), it didn’t seem to matter whether the prints were laminated or not or printed on synthetic stocks or not. It’s so nice to have a consensus, isn’t it?

What’s your experience?

In the world of personalization, we rely on data on individual recipients to target and personalize content to be relevant and meaningful to them. But in the world of B2B, decision-making has been more collaborative. In fact, according to IDC, the number of stakeholders for each purchase decision has grown by 40% — from five in 2010 to seven in 2012.

Tom Pisello, also known as “the ROI guy,” has written two very interesting blog posts on this topic from the sales perspective that are worth the read (“More Stakeholders = More Sales & Marketing Complexity in 2013” and “Are Buyer Personas Dead?“).

From a digital printing and personalization perspective, the impact of the expanding number of stakeholders could be significant.

As the number of stakeholders in any B2B decision grows, this will impact the ability of marketers to use personalization to promote their products and services. But for the better or the worse?

On one hand, we could say that it makes personalization to the individual less relevant. Stakeholders can range from IT to product management to finance, all of whom have differing agendas and motivations. Even the best, most sophisticated personalization efforts cannot span them all. The higher the number of stakeholders grows, the more watered down the impact of any individual marketing effort to any individual person on that team becomes.

On the other hand, every project often has one individual champion within the organization who advocates for the decision and propels it forward. We never know which of those 5–7 stakeholders on the team it’s going to be.  Sometimes all it takes is one. The recipient of that 1:1 marketing piece could be the person who makes the difference.

What is your experience? How do you think the expanding number of stakeholders affects personalization in marketing?

Creative direct mail can have a life far beyond the first recipient. In an Internet era, people go on Facebook and Reddit and Twitter to share the direct mail piece that turned their head. Here are some recent examples that I found particularly interesting, and that go to show that a little creativity can have a lasting effect in an increasingly digital world.

1. BMW “M-print”
I found this example extremely creative, in that it gave a new twist on variable print and personalization, as the car literally made thousands of unique impressions, and likely made exponentially more “impressions,” as 470,000 people have watched (on YouTube) the process that went into this direct mail campaign. Take a look:

Great campaign, great execution, and a lasting impression.

2. Mini (success from a glitch)
I found this earlier today on Reddit on the front page of “Funny,” and it shows that even in the face of a flub, there lies an opportunity. Take a look below, and see how a little creativity and humor can turn what could have felt like a disaster into having a customer that is “In on the joke.”

Included in the mailing was, you guessed it, a chocolate rose, a roll of duct tape and a can of Spam. Wonderful execution combined with a personal touch from a company that is known for being lighthearted. Goes to show that each individual mail piece you send has the ability to impact the recipient greatly and turn some bad PR into some great PR.

3. Griffiths, Gibson and Ramsay Productions (GGRP)
Possibly my all-time favorite example of creative direct mail (being an avid record collector and fan of intuitive design). GGRP Sound Studio mailed out a “make-your-own” phonograph player with a 45 rpm record. The recipient is enticed to build this working record-player and learns more about the business in the meantime.

This mailing reinforces the ideal that direct mail is most impactful when it becomes a keepsake, something that the recipient will refer back to in the future. Creative agencies were calling the Sound Studio asking if they had additional mailpieces to share!

Several members of our blog team have shared their recent “WOW” moments with print, such as Cineprint, Augmented Reality and a Lexus mailing that hit all the right “channels.” What is your Direct Mail story? What mailings stood out to you? Leave your comments below.

Editor’s Note: Keep up with all of Matt’s blogs at the SourceLink blog!